Mango time!
Fixing and sealing the fruit fly lures for the mango trees!
We are organic farmers and to our luck the buyers of my farm are are still getting the paper work organised, so we have the joy of the farm still in our hands. Since we are organic farmers, a friend sent us fruit fly lures from Goa which are more than 10 times cheaper than Amazon. So on Sunday we set up 20 lures in the farm and hung them up across the 25 Mallika and Raspuri trees.
This is last years lure!
It is truly amazing how many hundred male flies get caught and are thrown out by the lures. These lures prevent the flies from laying their eggs in our pea sized mangoes which are already growing on the trees. Since we do not spray the trees with chemicals, this is the organic method to prevent our crop from becoming infested by the maggots of the flies.
This year there is much joy in the farm as the avocados have flowered after 10 years. The trees were big and tall. Four of them, but sadly they gave fruit just once. Reading up on the issue the reason was simple - the flowers would come and fall off. BUT they were not pollinated as we did not have enough bees. The farmers of the bean and brinjal fields surrounding us were pumping pesticides to keep their crops safe which killed the bees and butterflies as well. This year they are growing flowers so we are in luck. The bees are back and the cold winter snap helped.
Chickoos are harvested and lie on the ground so the sap pours out into the soil.
Hundreds of chickoos too this year which I have sold on whatssapp in a matter of minutes. We have harvested FOUR sets of chickoos of at least 10kg each harvest. We have harvested star berries and aamlas, ramphals and jacks. Now the next round of jacks are growing fast and to our immense joy apples as well.
