Sharing the planting experience of flower and tree grower Hu Yusheng

    Hu Yusheng, 42 years old this year, is the director of the Villagers' Committee of Sandang Village, Shuyang County, Jiangsu Province. Influenced by the surrounding villages that became wealthy by growing flowers, starting in 1996 he set up a nursery on more than 2 mu of his own contracted farmland and got a taste of the money to be made. The flower and tree planting area has kept expanding, reaching more than 60 mu, and in recent years the annual income has exceeded 300,000 yuan. 

    In March 1996, the township organized township and village officials to visit local flower and tree growing villages to observe their specialty flower and tree cultivation. The seedling growers said: "If a mu of specialty flowers and trees is managed well, the annual net income can reach more than 10,000 yuan, and generally ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 yuan." At the time Hu Yusheng was very surprised by these figures and found them simply unbelievable. Because at that time the net income per mu from growing vegetables, cotton and other cash crops was only about 1,000 yuan, just 1/8 of the net income from growing specialty flowers and trees, while the returns from growing grain were even lower. Through market surveys he also learned that many large and medium-sized cities had a very large demand for landscaping seedlings. So he developed the idea of growing specialty flowers and trees. 

    After returning home he began building the nursery and preparing the land, making small hotbeds or using shade nets to raise seedlings. He spent more than 4,000 yuan to buy flower and tree varieties that Shuyang did not yet have at the time, such as golden locust, red maple, twisted willow, purple-leaf plum, and golden-edged boxwood, built small plastic sheds, and raised nearly more than 8,000 small seedlings on more than 2 mu of contracted farmland. The following spring, while thinning the seedlings he sold more than 3,000 seedlings and recovered more than 5,000 yuan. With this more than 5,000 yuan he contracted more than another 3 mu, further expanding the flower and tree planting area, and purchased specialty flowers and trees such as silk tree, Chinese tulip tree, Chinese fringe flower, and smoketree for propagation. In 2001, after expanding the planting scale to 24 mu, he began three-dimensional flower and tree planting in the flower nursery, interplanting small trees, hedges, shrubs, and ground cover plants among large trees, or interplanting the same type of flowers and trees of different seedling ages, so that every year there were both small-sized seedlings and larger-sized seedlings for sale, which not only helped renew flower and tree varieties but also improved economic returns. At present the benefit of his three-dimensional flower and tree planting has reached 14,000 yuan per mu, 40% more than single planting, and it has also greatly improved the land utilization rate. This spring his planting area has expanded to 62 mu, and he sold more than 100,000 plants of various specialty flowers and trees, with an income of nearly 180,000 yuan. 

    In recent years, under his demonstration and leadership, all farming households and all farmland in the village have been planted with specialty flowers and trees, making it a famous flower and tree village in the whole county and even the whole city, and the annual income of each flower-growing household exceeds 20,000 yuan. He also teaches villagers new cultivation techniques free of charge, strives to introduce new popular flower and tree varieties with good market prospects and high economic returns, and provides the village's seedling-growing households with a whole series of pre-production, in-production, and post-production services. Now he has established the village flower and tree association; the association teaches seedling growers techniques once a week and collects information on new flower and tree varieties and market prices through the Internet and other means, providing it to seedling growers in order to further raise the level and efficiency of the village's flower and tree production and help villagers become wealthy together.