Are You Inviting Pests and Virus in your farm?

Ringing your farm boundary with trees may just do that.

Some Farms just love to invite Pests and Virus to what ever crop is planted. Farmers need to be careful in planning their farms to avoid inviting Pests and Virus.

In this farm, lemon trees have been planted sometime late in the rainy season. The farm boundary has a number of forest trees, some variety of teak, bottle guard trees, camphor trees, bamboos etc. – some are quite tall and some are middlish height. Due to this in winter a lot of shade falls on the farm ground as sun is low in east as can be seen in photo. Only when sun is in south do the full sun rays fall here. As said, in winter, in this particular place, the direct sun rays are only just warm.

So as I was taking a visit to this farm house, I was observing how the lemon plants were coming up. All plants in the south side were well looking good. But in this northeast corner plants were showing upward curling of leaves, yellow leaves and in some leaves presence of leaf miner. See photos.

I have also had occasion to observe that the roots of trees in the periphery of land had come into the Polyhouse and then risen upwards into the flower beds and through these root the  daily dose of Fertigation and watering which was actually meant for the flowers was going to the trees. And this diversion of feed to trees was causing distress in plants of flowers with some plants outright wilting and production in others going down substantially. A lot of effort had to be made to cut the roots coming into the Polyhouse. This effort I am happy to say did result in restoring the health of flower plants in the Polyhouse.

That brings me to the headline of my blog today. The trees which are normally planted around the boundary of a farming land:

1. Occupy the space above the ground.

2. Roots extend on all sides inside the ground in search of food.

3. Any number of worms, pests, parasites make their residence in the tree trunks and limbs.

4. The tree canopy obstructs the sun rays.

5. The canopy also obstructs smooth falling of rains on the land below.

6. A lot of farm land becomes useless for any other farming activity.

7. The trees extending on all sides, roots extending all sides, cause a number of disputes between neighboring farms.

8. Birds make a perch on the trees and it is easier for them to damage your crops.

Yes trees provide for environment; provide a scenic value and a solid sense of ownership. But the problems created by trees probably far outweigh the same. Installing cement or plastic posts at intervals between farm lands should normally be enough solid ownership experience, besides being cheaper and free from pests, worms, parasites, birds, virus generated by trees.  Trees are best in a group of its own apart from farming lands. Trees and even barbed or other type of wire mesh are really not required for boundary indications of farming land. Why I include barbed or other wire mesh is because of high cost of installation and then high cost of maintenance of same. If one does not maintain the wire mesh, not only it looks ungainly but is dangerous to those working around the same.

Fencing is really required if animals are to be protected and then good fencing needs to be installed. Otherwise ….

Let us have your opinion on this.

About nkp

Hi ; I have had opportunity to travel widely and have keen watched whatever farming practices the local farmers were engaged in. Back home been growing gerberas mostly in polyhouses, but outside in kitchen garden as well. i love these hardy perennials. good for business too if done in a routine orderly scientific manner. Also engaged in farming of wheat and organic vegetables on a small scale for me and family. My service profile has been that of an electronic and telecom engineer and now am engaged in web site creation and blogging.