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Manila Bulletin, Agriculture, Thurs., Nov. 18, 1999

Many ways you can grow better high-value fruit; seminar set

Section Editor Zac B. Sarian

There are many ways you can grow better high-value fruits such as longkong, durian, mangosteen, rambutan, mango, lychee, longan and some others.

     Step one is to plant the right variety. There are many varieties that are excellent but there are also others that are inferior. The advice of Bernie Dizon, the fruit expert, is to buy only outstanding varieties form reliable sources of planting materials.

     Some unscrupulous dealers go to the the extent of passing off a longkong what is ordinary planting material of lanzones. He advises that the buyer should chew a part of the leaf of the plant. If the leaf is bitter the plant is an ordinary lanzones. The leaf of the longkong, on the other hand, has no bitter taste whatsoever.

     If you have bought a grafted longkong and you want to hasten the growth of longkong so it will fruit earlier, or so it can provide more scions for grafting, Dizon has a suggestion.

     Inarch the grafted longkong to an ordinary lanzones that already has developed a sizeable stem and is growing in the ground. The longkong scion will grow very fast as he has experienced in a plant he topworked at his demo farm in Quezon City.

     For those who would like to have instant fruiting trees such as rambutan, Dizon recommends the planting of large planting materials. In a techno-demo farm he is supervising in Teresa, Rizal, the seven- year-old rambutan he planted in October 1998 already produced profuse fruits in May this year.

Bernie Dizon is inspecting the point of union of the longkong he had inarched into an ordinary lanzones that had already developed a sizeable trunk. The inarched longkong grew very fast

For those who would like to grow mangosteen, including those in Luzon, Dizon advises that the plant be planted in partially shaded growing areas. Ideal site are coconut plantations and others with partial shade.

Dizon emphasizes the proper size of the hole as well as the placing of fertilizer at the bottom of the hole at planting time so that the roots of the plant will grow deeper, thus the tree will be better anchored. If the soil is clayey, he recommends the use of a mixture of garden soil, old manure and rice husk as growing medium.