Agriculture

There’s an easy and quick way to prepare liquid fertilizer. All it takes is to dissolve urea (46-0-0) in water.

This dilute solution can be immediately used for soil drench and spray application to supplement nitrogen to plants in need of the nutrient or to ensure its availability.

1% urea solution can be prepared just before application

The basic procedure that we follow is based on the long-established fact that 1% urea solution can be sprayed or used to water many plants including the leafy vegetable pechay (Brassica sp.).

As for maintenance fertilizer for potted seedlings in the nursery, we do the watering once a week to once every two weeks.

But first, the theoretical basis.

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Both sexual and asexual methods are applicable in propagating molave or tugas trees (Vitex parviflora Juss.).

Sexual methods consist of using extracted seeds and intact fruits, including wildlings that originate from the embryo within seeds.

Asexual methods include the use of stem cuttings.

This paper is about the propagation of molave using fruits and seeds.

The use of wildlings and stem cuttings as propagating materials is dealt with on another page (click here to read).

But first, the distinction between the fruit and seed of the molave tree.

A molave tree has many tiny flowers (~6-8 mm long), attached to the branches of a panicle (flower cluster like that in rice) having a peduncle (stalk) that emerges from the tip of a stem.

After pollination and double fertilization, each flower develops into a plant organ which is botanically called fruit (click to read What is a Fruit?). 

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The agribusiness potential of growing bamboo has expanded.

This is primarily due to advances in engineered bamboo technology in conjunction with the worldwide concern to mitigate global warming.

I wrote these in 2010. 

Note: Herein author wrote a school paper on bamboo in the late 1990s. It consisted of more than 30 computer-encoded pages for class reporting in graduate school. It’s a waste, that paper did not survive to this day.

Nevertheless, he published via the Web an e-book entitled “Bamboo Production and Propagation Methods” in 2010.

It also contained a statement on the feasibility of growing bamboo.

Funny, one website now assumes some kind of ownership of the book.

I myself, with my name clearly shown on the first page, could not download the file unless I register which requires giving my credit card number.

The copyright notice “Copyright @2010 cropsreview.com” is also reflected at the bottom of every page.

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For kaong seed propagation and nursery care, the following steps are outlined:

1. Harvest ripe fruits, indicated by the yellowing of the outermost part or skin.

Otherwise, collect seeds under the canopy of mature palms.

The seeds should have no holes which serve as entry of seed borers. Then put the seeds in a pan of water. Discard the seeds that float.

Use only the seeds which sink to the bottom because they have high probability of seed germination (but not certainty).

Kaong seeds are recalcitrant just like other palms, that is, they easily loss viability when dried to a critical level.

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The earthworm is an amazing creature but it is nothing new.

In 1881, Charles Darwin (1809-82), the English naturalist who is better known for his theory of evolution by natural selection, described the habits of the burrowing type of these organisms.

The Habits of the Earthworm

Among his observations and deductions are the following (Darwin 1881):

– They are nocturnal; they wander about at night. They can crawl forward and backward;

– They have no eyes, but they can distinguish day from the night; they retreat rapidly into their burrows when brightly illuminated;

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The Giant Staghorn Fern or Capa de Leon (Platycerium grande) is one of the most interesting members of the hanging ferns.

It is a highly prized ornamental crop due to its majestic form and size.

This fern belongs to the phylum Pteridophyta (ferns and allies) under the order Polypodiales and family Polypodiaceae and is endemic in the Philippines.

Davao is particularly popular as a place where live specimens of this fern can be easily found.

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Vitex parviflora Juss. is the scientific name of the small-flower chaste tree, also called the molave or tugas tree.

The name was authored by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836), a French botanist, hence the Juss. after the scientific name.

One of its synonyms, Vitex littoralis, was authored by another French botanist, Joseph Decaisne (1807-82), abbreviated Decne.

The molave or V. parviflora belongs to the Verbena family or Verbenaceae, order Lamiales, group Asterids of the Eudicots, under phylum Angiospermae (also called Magnoliophyta or Anthophyta) of the kingdom Plantae (Simpson 2010).

The family is also called the Molave family (Merrill 1912). Verbena is a Latin word referring to plants with clusters of flowers of various colors.

Branches of these plants were worn by heralds and priests as a sacred symbol (Traupman 1995).

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