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Friday, June 21, 2013

Pruning of Mango UHD - Summer 2013

With a couple of showers earlier in the month, mercury has been hovering at 35-37 celsius, which is a huge relief from what we witnessed in April and May. Most days have been partially cloudy in the month and we took the opportunity to prune the mango plants at this time. Pruning was long due but we delayed due to high temperature (in excess of 40 celsius).

Typically, June experiences strong winds and this time around the wind farms across the state have been delivering 3 phase power 24x7! We did have a few of the heavier branches suffer damage but noticed new growth sprouting promptly from the damaged areas.

Most plants are being pruned for the third and fourth time. We have started to see a well defined canopy emerge in most plants.

Alphonso plots are being pruned for the third time now.


Imampasand plots have shown steady and uniform growth. 

As stated in an earlier postings, we need to de-weed. Mulch sheets are a significant investment for the lengths we need so we plan to try a dual approach of bio weed retardants and card boards squares as an ad-hoc measure. Lets see how they fare.


Why not recycle - the sheep make a go at the mango greens!


Day 9 - New growth from a damaged branch

On a closing note, does anyone have experiences around feeding Mango leaves to Goats / Sheep? We are being advised that mature Mango leaves are not very conducive for Sheep but our herd seems to be quite enthusiastic about this occasional treat so far. Observations around prior pruning attempts have been posted in earlier postings. Feel free to research the blog and provide your commentary around better or other best practices.

4 comments:

  1. Apparently, Mango leaves contain Mangiferin, which is a phenolic compound. It is toxic if consumed in high levels. Now that our pruning is over, the herd will not be getting this anytime soon.
    We noted that the urine of most animals was quite yellow in color during the time they were fed mango leaves - possibly due to mango leaves.

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  2. Nice blog. I enjoyed reading your posts, very informative and short.

    I just stumbled upon your blog while searching goat farm shed designs. I am a techie too, seriously thinking of going back to nature and to enter farming. I plan to start a goat farm initially and also interested in horticulture and hydroponics farming. Still in the research stages.

    I may get in touch with you. Thank a lot you doing a Great job... sharing your experiences in farming.

    MMK

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  3. Feel free to contact me and keep us updated on your developments..

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  4. British had banned feeding Cows Mango leaf in North India, where they used to make yellow dye out of Cow urine. Cows used to die after some time of this.

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