Akula

Hey Louis!

Are you taking any unusual (creative) or additional steps to prevent disease since you have increased your planting density?

Thanks!

louis14

Hi Akula,

I will only discuss the GM cultivars as we are stopping any further development of Namwa and will end up replacing them with GM.
Basically, we have very few problems with the two cultivars of GM we handle as they are quite endemic to this region and therefore have adapted to resist local diseases. Our main problem is rust thrips which has obliged us to use some regular mild pesticide spraying. Apart from that, we now only spread from our own pups and macro propagated plantlets and apply a selective breeding process in the spirit of Fukuoka.
Deleafing is very important for us nowadays so as not to let the plant become dormant. Plants that are continuously growing new leaves are healthy, plants that are allowed to become more or less dormant become easily sick. So basically we push them to grow and never stop doing that. It seems to be working for us.
We control pupping, as we harvest the pups, leaving always the strongest until the first pstem flowers, then we start to leave a second pup. We also deleaf the pups as soon as they start to grow larger fronds.
No strangers are allowed into the banana fields and vehicle circulation is very much controlled. Tools and tanks are regularly disinfected

Akula

Thank you for the response Louis.

I think I will try your deleafing technique on one of my namwa pups to see if it grows faster in my patch. My namwas fully unroll a new leaf every seven days. If I could trim that to five days it would reduce the vegetative phase by almost 30% which would be awesome in my zone.

I suppose there is a risk that by reducing the number of leaves fruit quality or number may suffer due to a reduction in total/accumulated photosynthesis activity over the growth period since there are fewer leaves but for me and my zone that is probably an acceptable risk/trade-off if it increases the probability of obtaining fruit reliably each year.

Your field looks great! So much green!

edwmax

To my reelection, there was no science given. It was just a statement in reference to forced dwarfism. ... I think it was PR-Giants, that made the comment. May be he will see this post and comment.


I'll look later for the original post.


Just think about it. A Plant only grow so many leaves before flowering. So if the pstem is chopped when reaching about 75% height and before the plant starts stacking leaves, it still has time to grow those leaves before flowering. But not be able to add much height. ... You are de-leafing the plant anyway, so remove the upper pstem/leaves and allow the new leaves to grow at a short height.


Anyway, your in a very good position to try this without any additional cost. The info gained would/could be useful with other varieties.

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louis14

The subject of this thread is not optimizing Namwa performance but field planting density. I have another thread about this subject so I will reply there

Forcing K. Namwa to grow faster

louis14

One month has passed since the last TLC photo. Another shot at deleafing the whole field and the K. Hom are looking just fine. It is now easy to creep into the field, just by bending over slightly. The highest leaves are reaching up to 8 feet and all is good. We could do with a little more rain though!

Akula

Just re-read the thread and understand you are planting at a density of about 4,000 plants per acre. GM is a pretty big plant too. Waiting to see what happens when the plants are 3-4 meters tall.

Looks fantastic!

louis14

Thanks, it's already nice and shaded under there. I'm thinking to install a beer stall in the green cool...

Nicolas Naranja

That looks awesome. The plantains I planted were done at 1200 plants per acre. I though that number was really high. Twin rows 15 feet on center 5 feet between plants with a 10' drive row.

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

louis14

We planted all our GM previously at 1200 per acre, these fields are all fruiting and pupping and there is so much space and weeds between each plant that it incited me to try this new HD planting.
Another important aspect is the fact that the new watering system is just awesome.
We have another field ready to plant now, just waiting for the rain to make easy drilling.

louis14

We just today finished transplanting a second HD field. We are particularly proud as the 600 GM we transplanted are all issued from our own macro-propagation operation. The density has been decreased as an additional experiment, instead of 1 meter between plants we have planted at 1,2 meters between plants which has decreased the density per acre from 4000 to 2750. Not that we are unhappy with the 4000 field, it's just so we can evaluate the best option for us, for our future fields. We have kept the overhead irrigation system as it is proving to be perfect in its functionality, delivering large and precise amounts of water with sprinklers that do not get easily blocked and that are away from weed, earth and bug interference. Watering two rows with one pipe also allows great savings on irrigation equipment.

HMelendez

Louis,




Looking good!.....Amazing!.....You are doing an awesome job!.....Thanks for posting/sharing an update!.....Keep it up my friend!.....

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Best day

Thanks for the updates. It is really interesting to see how you plan and design these
Fields.

Bill

Akula

Thanks for the update Louis!

That's a great photo showing your sprinkler system. Great water shot straight to the pstem area.

How much water is delivered through the irrigation system per plant differ during the life stages of the plant in the field i.e. small pup, medium, large, fruiting?

Thanks!

louis14

Hi Akula

Right now it is the rainy season so we try not to water but if we have 3-4 days without rain then we will irrigate these young plants. During the dry season we normally water the bananas three times per week if possible starting mid afternoon. Our soil is very sandy and the water penetrates the soil very quickly so it is of no use to water too much, it's better to water regularly and that is what we do. We have to pump the water up from the river to irrigate the whole plantation and this is done with 4 inch pipes and a massive 5 liter diesel engine and pump.
When it becomes worthwhile I will upgrade the system to a solar pump but this is a large expense not yet justifiable. To answer your question we give about the same amount of water to 3 months old plants as we do to adults and we try to keep all that reasonable as the pump engine burns 4 liters of diesel per hour. I have not measured how much water we give to each plant as we measure more in pumping time but judging by the puddles we create we give at least 30 to 50 liters of river water to each plant, more to the big namwah bushes and we spend our time opening and closing valves and running up and down the plantation to the different zones.

louis14

Yesterday i measured the sprinkler flow rate, each of those green sprinklers spurts out 1,5 liters per minute which is massive. 20mn = 30 liters per plant. In 40 minutes, we pump 18,000 liters of water onto that new field. We also tested the fertigation system and it also works fine.

beam2050

wow, blow those plants over. how much pressure are you running at the pumps?

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

louis14

Its quite a big piece of land and it's fully irrigated, so we have a Japan made fireman's pump with in theory a max discharge capacity of 2400 liters per minute @ 8 bar. This is run by a 5000 cc diesel engine and we have four inch water pipes running underground throughout the plantation. We need to service the pump, take it away to be dismantled and rebuilt as we are not reaching that max capacity and there is always some air in the system, but for that we would need a couple of weeks of regular rainfall to feel safe. Also we run the engine slowly so as not to use up too much fuel. What's good with these new green sprinkler heads is that they have a large hole that doesn't get blocked easily by the usual green algae deposit. We usually irrigate through 3-400 sprinklers max at any one time, which pushes the muck out. Its not nasty on the plants by any means.

beam2050

8 bar MIGHT be a bit to much pressure for your piping, depending on how you system is connected. would be to much pressure for glued joints but not for joints that are connected with say victaulic clamps. at 1.5 liters per minute your getting the job done by the sound of it. probably a good thing your throttling that motor down. at 5 bar per minute you would be doing over 70 psi which should be ok for your glued joints which I presume you are using.

your air leak is probably your shaft seal which might be wearing out from the dirty river water which should be very good for the plants. shaft seals can be pretty easy to replace depending on condition or type of pump. some fire pumps use a type of rope shaft seal that is very easy to replace. you just need a cork screw type puller. these seals require a lot of greasing. your pump should leak at the shaft seal if that is the problem.

if not your leak is from your suction pipe. I would watch out for your suction being to close to the surface of the water.

but I figure you already know this or have people who do. thought I would throw it out tho.

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

louis14

Correct! Glued PVC class 8.5 pipes all the way, but we have some safety caps that will blow out like a rig hitting oil when the foreman forgets to open a valve. The suction pipe was replaced recently so I know it has to be seals or worn out inner parts. The good thing is this pump has bronze inners, forget about any spares from Japan though, the prices would be crazy but the locals can re-make any part if needed, which is great. As I said, we just need some safety with the rain as I can't risk not watering the banana plantlets. It seems we won't be able to do it this year as there are only two months left before the dry season starts. I'm still hoping though. I basically don't want to spend too much on the current pump as I plan to change the whole setup to solar powered once all the land is fully planted.