Fruits on terrace !

Star fruit

A bumper harvest on this little tree which is one year old.

These are a plenty too!

Chikoo ( Sapota) sweet like sugar!

The chikoo tree eight years old now.

Guava, Custard apple, Pomegranate, Star fruit

are some of the fruit trees one can easily grow on the terrace.

Please refer to the procedure for planting a sapling in Amrut Mitti in a container/basket here.

Now once planted in containers filled with Amrut Mitti following precautions should be taken.

Avoid over watering.

Care should be taken to see that we don't over water. Amrut Mitti has excellent water holding capacity and therefore, it is important to ensure that soil is moist and not wet.When saplings mature into trees, and Amrut Mitti is also 5-6 years old, we need to follow nature's cycle and monitor the watering accordingly.

Trees drop their leaves in winter and autumn. So be it on our farms. STOP WATERING. The Amrut Mitti harvests dew and takes up water for its needs from the atmosphere.

When grown from a graft

The saplings if grown from a grafted plant start giving fruits at an early date. As early as 8 - 10 months. It is important to understand that in case of grafted plants, the age of the plant from which it is grafted becomes the age of the sapling. And so the lifespan of these trees is also less.

Add Amrut Mitti proportionately to growth of canopy.

When saplings grow in Amrut Mitti, there is excellent growth of feeder root resulting in healthy canopy of plants. The volume of Amrut Mitti reduces with time and therefore it is important to keep adding doses of Amrut mitti in the container and mulch with sugarcane bagasse. Normaly the requirement of Amrut Mitti is 4 ltrs /sq ft of canopy of plant.

Pruning

Prune from time to time to maintain an umbrella shape. You can see from the pictures above that the fruit trees at MbPT terrace farm are now quite matured. In the beginning of summer, prune your trees if necessary. On a city farm, we need to keep the height of trees restricted to the level, where we can reach the highest point easily.

In case of guava plant check growth of branches on main branch, secondary branch and tertiary branch. In the secondary branch allow growth of leaves up to 10 nodes only. Beyond 10th node the plant will have only vegetative growth and there will be no fruit. Fruits will appear only between second and fourth node. So prune the stem at the 10th node. Pruning here will result in the sprouting of two more branches at this point. This helps in increasing canopy. Increased canopy results in increase in photosynthesis, and increase storage of food in stem. Same with the Custard apple tree. Results of pruning are that you will see fruits almost on every node of stem. :)

One can visualize that in nature , a herbivorous animal like goat will eat the lower branches which it can easily reach. The top branches, but those on the periphery were eaten by elephants, giraffe etc...Thus in nature pruning was done by animals ) However we do not have goats and other animals to do this job and therefore have to undertake it ourselves. The fallen leaves and the ones pruned should return back to our soil. Ensure that greens are not added directly in touch with soil, but on top of mulch. (In nature the greens eaten by animals, return to the soil through their dung! )

Now after the leaves have fallen ,and trees start storing food in stems. As summer progresses you will see fresh new leaves sprouting, along with flush of buds of fruits. More the stored food in stem, more the yield of fruit. Again .. water very moderately if not at all.....All this time, keenly check soil conditions for moisture till you get used to the results of Amrut Mitti.

Blooms of safed jaam

Tiny safed jaam

Be blessed with abundant fruit! For yourself... for the birds and the bees.....and the insects!