The Fruit and Vegetable Growing King Who Constantly Innovates His Growing Techniques

    Sun Mingxia, from Xiaotun Village, Puji Town, Jiaozhou City, studies science and technology, applies science and technology, and actively implements standardized agricultural production. On the road to prosperity through science and technology, she has gone further and further, leading and helping more than 70 women onto the path of shared prosperity. She has been named a female expert in Qingdao's "Double Study, Double Compare" competition activity, a pacesetter in entrepreneurship for invigorating agriculture through science and technology in Shandong Province, and an advanced female expert in the national "Double Study, Double Compare" activity.

Sun Mingxia (file photo, source: Shandong Women's Network)

Wealth is a beautiful aspiration of humanity. More than ten years of experience and lessons taught her that only by mastering science, this "golden key," can one open the door to prosperity. Sun Mingxia began greenhouse cultivation in 1991. At that time, because she did not understand the techniques, her income was very low. In order to master growing techniques, she subscribed to various newspapers, periodicals and books, and took part in "Green Certificate" training. Through unremitting effort and study, she mastered greenhouse growing techniques. Not only did she obtain the "Green Certificate," she was also rated as a farmer technician, and her income continued to increase.

Science and technology paved the road to prosperity. Besides growing cucumbers and tomatoes in her greenhouses, Sun Mingxia also grew some watermelons. Although watermelons are delicious, they have one fatal weakness: they cannot tolerate continuous cropping, and once a field is planted with them, it cannot be planted again for ten years. For many years, people had not found a solution. To solve this problem, she read through a large number of books and occasionally came across a report saying that someone had grafted watermelon onto gourd to solve the continuous cropping problem. She wanted to try it too, and ultimately the experiment succeeded. The grafted watermelons were not only unaffected by fusarium wilt, but also had high yields and good quality. After the news spread, many melon growers came one after another asking to order watermelon seedlings. According to the users' requirements, she bought the best rootstock and cultivated 40,000 watermelon seedlings for the people in her greenhouses.

In order to master the latest techniques, she went to the Qingdao Agricultural Science Institute and Shouguang and other places to learn grafting techniques, and after returning she innovated on them, so that her technical level became higher and higher. The number of grafted watermelon seedlings increased from 40,000 per year to 300,000 per year. In addition to orders from her own village and town, they were also sold to other villages and towns. After the success of grafted watermelon seedlings, her steps grew bigger and bigger. In October 2000, she invested 100,000 yuan to build 6 winter-warm greenhouses in the Puji Town agricultural park. In addition to grafting watermelon seedlings in the greenhouses, she also boldly introduced new varieties, planting new varieties such as Elizabeth muskmelon, Saint Cherry tomato and Dragon Girl Cherry tomato in the greenhouses, and achieved a bumper harvest. Following the approach of "having what others do not have, being better than others where they have it, switching when others plant it, and taking the lead at every step," she trial-planted more than ten new varieties one after another, all of which succeeded.

Standardized agricultural production, and a road to prosperity growing wider and wider. In order to improve the quality of melons, fruits and vegetables and increase economic income, Sun Mingxia began to implement standardized agricultural production. She actively participated in the training courses on standardized agricultural production knowledge held by Qingdao, earnestly studied and mastered the basic knowledge of standardized agriculture, especially the production techniques for pollution-free agricultural products, and carried out agricultural production strictly in accordance with the standards. Starting from watermelon seedling cultivation, she used pollution-free pesticides and fertilizers in accordance with the requirements of standardized agricultural production. Under her scientific management, the watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and vegetables she grew had good quality, high prices and were in short supply. The products were sold to major supermarkets such as Liqun and Guohuo, and she signed year-round supply contracts with the major supermarkets, with annual income reaching 120,000 yuan.

One flower brings fragrance to a hundred flowers. Sun Mingxia relied on science and technology and standardized agricultural production to embark on the road to prosperity. But in her prosperity she did not forget her sisters. To help more women get rich as quickly as possible, she taught them watermelon grafting techniques and the growing techniques for muskmelon, tomatoes and so on hand by hand, and lent them money interest-free to build greenhouses. Zhang Shu'e, a woman from Xiaotun Village, lacked funds and had no money to build a greenhouse. When Sun Mingxia learned of this, she took the initiative to visit her and lent Zhang Shu'e 10,000 yuan to help her build a winter-warm greenhouse, and guided her in growing techniques, so that she quickly mastered greenhouse growing techniques and her annual income reached more than 20,000 yuan. Driven and helped by Sun Mingxia, more than 50 women built winter-warm greenhouses, and she also provided more than 20,000 watermelon seedlings free of charge to more than 20 women from poor families, helping them onto the road out of poverty toward prosperity.

Over several years, Sun Mingxia grafted more than 1 million watermelon seedlings, grew more than 2,000 mu of watermelons, and created an output value of more than 3 million yuan. Driven by her, winter-warm greenhouses covering more than 200 mu have been built in the Puji Town agricultural park, and standardized agricultural production has been implemented, enabling women to pave with their own hands a successful road of shared prosperity toward a moderately prosperous life.