How to Plant Longan Fruit- The following article contains a guide on how to plant a good longan and tips for success for those of you who want to cultivate longan. Longan fruit is very popular with many people because the taste of this fruit is very sweet and fresh. This fruit flavor is very similar to the taste of lychee fruit. It's just the texture and color of the skin that distinguishes. In addition to its delicious taste, this longan fruit turns out to contain many health benefits for the human body because the content in fruits such as vitamin C and various essential minerals. Some of the benefits of longan fruit include:
- Source of Vitamin C
- Strengthens bones
- Keep eye health
- Help with diet programs
- As a source of energy
- Heal wounds
- Reduce stress
Now, after knowing a lot of the benefits as above, the market demand for longan fruit is also high especially in urban areas. Therefore, now longan plants are widely cultivated for sale to get profit. Hearing the potential of this longan fruit you might also be interested in participating in cultivating it.
You need to know that to plant these longan trees you do not need large maintenance costs as to how to grow melons and are not as complicated as how to grow chilies. Even planting in the yard of the house can and you can use it as a shady tree as if you know how to plant mango or how to plant guava in your home garden.
Before you start cultivating longan plants, all you need to know is how to plant the right longan. This is so that you do not experience confusion and can get optimal benefits. For those of you who are interested in trying to cultivate longan, here we provide information about how to plant the longan longan to serve as your guide in cultivating longan.
How to plant longan fruit so that it can bear fruit quickly
The steps of planting longan are as follows:
01 Land Preparation
Longan fruit can actually live in the lowlands and highlands. A good planting area for longan plants must meet the following criteria:
- Exposure to direct sunlight at least 7 hours a day
- Soil contains enough nutrients
- Close to water sources for watering
- The level of soil acidity (pH) is between 5.5 - 7.5
- Somewhat far from the beach so the plants are not exposed to the fog of salt water from the sea.
If you have found a land that meets the above criteria then immediately do preparations such as weeding and pruning branches that block sunlight. Then you can make planting holes.
02 Planting Hole Making
The next way to plant longan is to make planting holes. If you plant a lot of longan trees, then the planting holes should be neatly arranged to facilitate the process of fruit care and harvest later. Use a hoe and dig a hole with a size of 50 x 50 cm with a depth of 40-50 cm. This hole will need to be filled with basic fertilizer before planting.
03 Giving Basic Fertilizer
For basic fertilizer this longan plant uses organic fertilizer and additional NPK + Kapur Dulomit. The best organic fertilizer for longan plants is manure. This manure needs to be completely decomposed by microorganisms to be ready to be absorbed by plants. To decompose the fertilizer, we need EM4 (Effective Microorganism) which is widely sold in agricultural stores. The way to apply EM4 to fertilizer is as follows:
- Dissolve 1/4 kg of sugar (sugar, brown sugar, juice or sugar cane) in 1 bucket of water
- Pour EM4 in the sugar solution
- Close and let stand at least 24 hours (the longer the better). This is to increase the number of microorganisms
- Mix manure + NPK + Dulomit with a ratio of 30: 1: 2 then stir evenly
- Put the fertilizer in a hole and flush with water
- Purse the EM4 solution that has been prepared beforehand and then cover the hole with the soil.
Leave at least 2 weeks so the fertilizer decomposes first. Avoid using fertilizer that is still new to the plant because the temperature in the soil will increase when fertilizer is being decomposed which in turn can eventually kill the roots of the plant.
04 Preparation of Longan Seeds
Longan can be seeded through seeds or through grafts. Each has advantages and disadvantages. The following is an explanation of how to seed a longan.
Longan Nursery Using Generative Ways
The steps are as follows:
- Make sure to choose longan seeds from superior seeds, which are already large, dense fruit and healthy (not sick)
- Get the seeds from ripe fruit even almost rotten, wash the seeds and dry in the sun for 1 hour
- The contents of a large black polybag plastic with a mixture of humus soil, husks and sawdust so that the soil remains loose
- Water the soil in a polybag to get wet (just a little)
- Plant longan seeds only 1 - 2 cm deep and place them in the shade
- Wait until the seeds grow
- After growing, do regular watering until the plant height is approximately 15 cm, it can be moved to a place exposed to direct sunlight for only 3 hours per day.
- After the seedling height is around 30-50 cm, the aunt is ready to be planted into the planting hole.
Advantages :
+ Plant life is longer
+ Plants are more resistant to pest attacks
+ The burning of plants is stronger
+ Production of fruit can outperform broodstock
Deficiency :
- The time of the nursery is rather long
- The first harvest time is also a bit long
- The plants will grow tall and big, making it difficult to harvest the fruit
- Maintenance costs from nurseries to harvesting more
Longan Nursery How to Vegetative Grafts
The steps are as follows:
- Choose a plant that has thick and healthy fruit and then look for stems that are straight and about 3 cm in diameter
- Peel the skin of the base of the stem that you want to graft and then clean it from the mucus until it's not slippery anymore
- Use plastic or coconut fibers as a wrapper.
- Tie it to the base under the peeled part
- Fill with wet humus soil then pinch the top end of the wrapper and tie the graft bud
- Consider the graft and diligently watered. Usually the roots will come out in the second or third week.
Cempedak | Benefits For Better Life
After the roots are felt long enough, then cut the bottom of the graft and then plant it into the planting hole that has been prepared.
Advantages :
+ The nursery time is relatively short
+ The first harvest time is also short
+ The trees will not grow tall so they are easily harvested
+ The costs incurred during the nursery to harvest less
Deficiency :
- The plant life is not long (according to the remaining age of the brood tree)
- Can not be used as a shady tree (yard shade)
- Less resistant to disease
- Plant roots are not strong
- Production of fruit will not exceed the broodstock and even tend to be less
Now after knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each nursery method, you can choose which method you want to use yourself.
05 Planting of seeds at planting holes
The steps for transferring seeds to the planting hole are as follows:
- Water seedlings before being moved
- Infuse of insecticides and fungicides in the planting hole before planting
- Do the transfer in the afternoon to avoid wilting during the day
- Immediately flush the plant that has been planted and then do the planting for the first 2 weeks
- Continue replanting after the first 2 weeks then continue at the treatment stage of longan plants.
- Care the seeds that have been moved.
06 Care for Planting
This is an important part of how to plant longan because it will affect plant growth. Treatment of longan plants that need to be done so that plants thrive.
07 Supplementary Fertilization
Use NPK solution and mix the liquid organic fertilizer that is leaked at the base of the plant. Dissolve 1 cup of NPK with 35 L of water then add about 40 ml of liquid organic fertilizer to pour. Repeat every 2-3 weeks. Do not pour NPK and urea fertilizer during the rainy season because rainwater already contains a lot of nitrogen.
08 Watering
Watering is done once a week in the dry season to keep the water level in the soil.
09 Deforestation of the Land Around the Tree Base
Hoe the soil around the base of the tree and collect it to form a mound around the plant. The point is that water quickly absorbs and does not stagnate, especially in the rainy season.
10 Basic Re-fertilization
Add the basic fertilizer every 8 - 12 months to maintain the supply of basic nutrients.
11 Pest and Disease Management
Although classified as pest resistant, but the pest attack certainly can reduce productivity and the quality of harvesting longan plants. In general, attacking pests can be classified into several groups.
12 Harvest longan
Longan fruit can be harvested at the age of 2 years after planting and for the transplanted one can be faster. From the time of flower to ripe fruit it usually takes about 2 months. How to harvest it is picked by hand or pole if it is too high. Make sure to pick the ripe kelengkles, which are the following characteristics:
- The color of the fruit becomes brownish yellow
- The fragrance of the fruit has smelled good
- The fruit structure is soft if pressed
- There is no connection that grows in bunches
- Fruit and away start to duck down
- You can also pick one then taste the fruit from the bunch. If it feels sweet and smells good, all bunches can be picked.
13 Post Harvest Treatment
In order for the longan tree to remain productive, then do not forget to do additional treatment after the plant is harvested. What needs to be done is almost the same as treatment, namely by providing supplementary fertilizer, only this time the level is somewhat increased. Basic fertilizers also need to be added so that the plant's nutritional supply is maintained until the next harvest.
Types of Pests in Longan Tree
When you want to find out how to plant longan, you also need to know the types of pests in longan and how to overcome them.
- Insects - Pests such as fruit suckers, caterpillars, fruit flies, and stem winches are groups of insects. To control it you can use insecticide type pesticides by spraying.
- Mushrooms - Fungal pests attack the roots, which causes fusarium wilt. The most common thing is in the rainy season. The symptoms are the leaves of the plant look wilted and eventually die. Before dying, then immediately fungicide in the root of the affected plant. It is important that the water does not pool around the plant roots.
- Bat - This bat is very detrimental when attacking in large quantities because in addition to eating and damaging old fruit he also knocked out young fruit. To overcome the bat attack, you can install the network around the tree and your land area. Bats will get caught in nets so you can catch them.
Success Tips for Longan Cultivation to Make the Harvest Abundant
Once you know how to plant longan well, then we will also provide tips for you so that the yield of your longan is more and more abundant. Here are tips for planting longan:
- Use 16-16-16 NPK because there is more macron content than NPK 15-15-15
- Spray ZPT auxin when the longan tree starts flowering. This will add to the number of flowers that come out so that the fruit will also be more
- Spray gutelic acid ZPT on the fruit that is still small so that later the fruit size is much larger so that it is heavier when weighed.
- Pack the KNO3 to the roots of the plant approximately 2 weeks before harvest. This will add to the sweetness and soft texture of the longan fruit.
0 comments: