One thing i am looking for is a course they have detailing the aspects of a certain species, for me wax apple. The AG park here in Pingtung has a great one, and i really need to learn flower triggering methods and grafting but they do not allow foreigners to take the course. I have JFRV and my wife begged them, no go. I have been turned down 3 times at this park and i am tired of trying them, but they have something i need.
I tried talking teh wife into going and recording it, but i think it would be too much for her alone and not being into it at all, especially being an advanced class.
I have tried university but they are more general botany/biology/agriculture and not all are too into me just paying for one course anyway and i will likely still miss out on my goals with wax apple.
Now i am stuck.
Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on where to go? Taiwan is a leader in wax apple, and is one of those times where local education would be world class i would think, for the topic at hand.
I"m sorry to hear this and it is another example of provincialism at work. I am interested in the idea of farming plants but have not actually gone through with anything yet so I am also keen to know if you can get around this obstacle.
Fuck’em. Why would you want to join a group who don’t want “foreigners”? Bunch of ignorant racist numpties. From your previous posts, I suspect you know more about farming than they do anyway. I really wouldn’t use methods like hormone triggers for flowering - you’ll just find yourself chasing an ever-receding target set up by marketing people.
This, I suggest, is a good reason for not getting involved in wax apples. If you copy their methods, you’ll end up delivering the same product in the same time frame, and getting miserable prices. Find something different that grows well on your land, perhaps something that you have exclusive knowledge of that locals don’t, and become an expert on it. Perhaps breed your own landrace. I saw abiu (pouteria caimito) the other day being sold for NT$50/each. One month only, while they were in season. They were nice. And yes, I sprouted the seeds
There’s a sizeable market for premium organic fruit here; people are becoming more aware that “traditionally” grown fruit has been sprayed with all sorts of nasty shit, and they’ll pay over the odds for something better. I’d take up cfimages’ offer of the permaculture course. The average farmer here is still learning as gospel truth stuff that was proven wrong back in 1980.
Fuck’em. Why would you want to join a group who don’t want “foreigners”? Bunch of ignorant racist numpties. From your previous posts, I suspect you know more about farming than they do anyway. I really wouldn’t use methods like hormone triggers for flowering - you’ll just find yourself chasing an ever-receding target set up by marketing people.
This, I suggest, is a good reason for not getting involved in wax apples. If you copy their methods, you’ll end up delivering the same product in the same time frame, and getting miserable prices. Find something different that grows well on your land, perhaps something that you have exclusive knowledge of that locals don’t, and become an expert on it. Perhaps breed your own landrace. I saw abiu (pouteria caimito) the other day being sold for NT$50/each. One month only, while they were in season. They were nice. And yes, I sprouted the seeds
There’s a sizeable market for premium organic fruit here; people are becoming more aware that “traditionally” grown fruit has been sprayed with all sorts of nasty shit, and they’ll pay over the odds for something better. I’d take up cfimages’ offer of the permaculture course. The average farmer here is still learning as gospel truth stuff that was proven wrong back in 1980.[/quote]
There must be a lot of Fruits that could be grown here. You just have to make sure they are chewy and you can spit them out of your Truck at passers by.
Try teaching yourself. Grafting is relatively easy to learn. Bud and stem grafts are easy to do. There must be web pages around on the the subject, I haven’t checked. You can practice on a lot of the local annuals, crotons, hibiscus, etc. that are very forgiving. I’ve never grafted wax apple, but I’m guessing it’ll be no more difficult than soft stem crotons. Citrus is a bit more challenging, but with practice in a season or two you shoud become quite adept.
As to triggering flowering, some farmers apply potash or a compound high in potassium just before budding season.
I dont think there was much of a racists undertone, you just need an ROC passport to play. This is because the gov funds the classes. the one i want only has 30 slots in August, and if there are too many, they hand pick which ones seem most deserving. nice thought, but it likely means red envelope.
regardless i dont mind paying and i already am living here as a farmer. insurance and everything is farmer and we now have 2 farms.
I am astonished art just how little many people here know about their field. for example, a lot of pig farmers dont know how to mate their own pigs. the wax apple farmers we knows are arrogant d bags, so i tend not to get chatty as i dont want them on my land. but i think i might just go around asking some jujube farmers as they are grafting now. Biggest trouble is old farmers tend to speak a nonsensical taiwanese/mandarin hybrid, which requires the wife to be there and translate
i export plants, i dont deal with the table fruit market at all, nor will i ever. even so i need to learn local skillsets and knowledge. plus people running classes at an AG extension wont be your regular retarded drunk farmer, they will likely be very smart and able to ask an array of questions from very distant fields, something that is worth its weight in gold. a single day with someone experienced can easily teach you a months worth of book reading i find. at least with me.
Abiu has been here a while. some trees here i put at 20-30 years. more and more farms of commercial clones now though. also cacao, rambutan, durian, jaboticaba and many other “new” fruits are starting to poke their head in Taiwan (on retail shelves). These are indeed what i focus on and i collect numerous species while traveling and trading amongst friends. But there are still so many things to be learned by people who lead an industry. Taiwan is to wax apples what Germany is to automobiles.
[quote]Try teaching yourself. Grafting is relatively easy to learn. Bud and stem grafts are easy to do. There must be web pages around on the the subject, I haven’t checked. You can practice on a lot of the local annuals, crotons, hibiscus, etc. that are very forgiving. I’ve never grafted wax apple, but I’m guessing it’ll be no more difficult than soft stem crotons. Citrus is a bit more challenging, but with practice in a season or two you shoud become quite adept.
As to triggering flowering, some farmers apply potash or a compound high in potassium just before budding season[/quote]
indeed. i am quite well read on the subject, and for other plants am quite skilled at grafting, but not hardwood trees. Plus every climate is VERY different, something i never appreciated until i moved to Taiwan and had the water blow me a new one. It is all about learning the tricks and quirks of your local area and also the shortcuts, especially with sourcing materials.
its slow going on your own in a foreign tongue. I have done it up to now, but now i want to make money and just want to cheat and pay someone to tell me everything
Meh. That’s even worse - the gov’t supporting discrimination. You pay your taxes like everyone else, right? I’m trying to imagine an Indian working in the UK being told he can’t attend a local college course because he’s a foreigner. There’d be uproar.
That was sort of my point. If you actually joined this course, you’d probably be horrified by the content (or lack of it) and irritated by your classmates.
haha yup. Can’t understand a word they’re saying.
Do you mean you intend to export wax apple trees? I’d still say (and I’m guessing Wookiee would agree) you’d be far better off extrapolating what you already know. Following some by-the-numbers procedure is all very well, but there’s no substitute for experience. Yes, the course tutors will probably have a lot of facts in their heads, but it’ll simply be what someone told them at college. It won’t necessarily be correct, and they won’t necessarily be able to explain the whys and wherefores. If you read some of the academic papers being published in Taiwan, some of them clearly demonstrate a lack of basic understanding. I was reading one the other day about “invasive species”, which was lamenting the prevalence of non-native Fabaceae. The author was at a loss to explain why these plants were imported in the first place. I was thinking “Srsly? You can’t take a guess?”. He also seemed completely unaware that, being pioneers and (mostly) annuals, the majority of them only colonise areas that will otherwise support nothing else, and are quickly shaded out by other plants.
I dunno. I visited a fruit farm last year that reminded me of a battery-chicken operation: just a bunch of deformed trees strung up on wires with grafted buds attached (new ones sourced every year from Japan). Automated sprays to deliver water and chemicals. Soil that looked like the surface of the moon. I can’t even remember what the fruit was - I was just disgusted by the whole thing. That’s not farming. That’s the bloody Matrix. I have no time for nonsense like this. I still say: develop your own method. It might take longer, but I bet you’ll end up with a better (and unique) product. You might even have the locals coming to you for advice.
Hell yeah. That’s exactly why you need to do it the hard way. Anything worthwhile has no shortcuts.
Yeah, there’s no substitute for the practical know-how, often with a bloody thumb or two from a sharp budding knife.
I would suggest trying a nursery. Close to where I live, there are a few nurseries in the hills with a wide range of ornamentals and fruit trees. The folks are quite friendly when it comes to sourcing plants. Maybe they’ll be more open to helping you out.
It would depend on what kind of visa he was on. I used to check people’s eligibility for ESOL courses in the UK and quite frequently turned people away because they had ‘no recourse to public funds’ on their visas.
Well, fair enough, but the OP is married to a Taiwan national and presumably either has an APRC or JFRV, owns land and a business, and (I assume) pays taxes. He was also offering to pay tuition. I think it’s completely daft to turn people away when they’re offering to give you money. Frankly, I suspect they said “no” because they know he’d be appalled at their lack of knowledge and backward ideas. Taiwanese students never challenge the teacher, so the teachers can get away with mediocrity or worse. Of all the people who wander past my plot and give me “advice”, I’ve met precisely one who is extremely smart and knowledgeable (it turns out he runs an upmarket restaurant using his farm produce). The rest are just talking out of their ass.
Well, fair enough, but the OP is married to a Taiwan national and presumably either has an APRC or JFRV, owns land and a business, and (I assume) pays taxes. He was also offering to pay tuition. I think it’s completely daft to turn people away when they’re offering to give you money. Frankly, I suspect they said “no” because they know he’d be appalled at their lack of knowledge and backward ideas. Taiwanese students never challenge the teacher, so the teachers can get away with mediocrity or worse. Of all the people who wander past my plot and give me “advice”, I’ve met precisely one who is extremely smart and knowledgeable (it turns out he runs an upmarket restaurant using his farm produce). The rest are just talking out of their ass.[/quote]
Someone with the equivalent status in the UK would receive the same rights as a UK citizen, you’re right.
I used to get lots of advice from the oldies when I had my allotment, but most failed to take account of the fact that I wasn’t a 15 stone man with endless time on my hands. E.g., turn the whole thing over in the winter and you won’t have problem x. They all disagreed with each other anyway.
I once accumulated a whole collection of them sitting on my wall, disagreeing with each other in Taiwanese about what I “ought to do”. This was quite helpful, because I could then ignore the lot of them and get on with what I wanted to do.
My general experience is that what works for problem X one year won’t necessarily work next year. I’ve read a whole library’s worth of books on natural farming and found Fukuoka’s advice to be the best: don’t analyse. Just observe. And don’t fiddle with things if you don’t know what you’re doing. In the beginning, I tried too hard. You need to establish some basic structure and soil health, and make sure you’re not overrun by perennial weeds, but after that, it’s best to let nature do its thing. If you lose some of this plant, it doesn’t matter; perhaps the thing that ate it will subsequently protect you - via some complex chain you’ll never understand - against predators or diseases of that plant, that will inexplicably turn out just perfect.
this is not anything unique to Taiwan, the whole farmers disagreeing thing. Its quite common. Even sophisticated specialist groups like rose or cactus collectors can rarely, if ever, agree on any single topic of cultivation. At times it can be hard to even settle on a variety name or even a taxonomical ranking. Any business that has to do with raw nature is going to have so much variability that no one person is going to have THE answer. there are a billion answers to each question, and if we really want to learn we need to be willing to open our heads to the meaning of each one.
I agree Taiwanese are not generally considered to be very intelligent and will often take the easiest, least work possible to accomplish something, but it is precisely because of that being different that what some call normal that you get a whole new set of thought processes that can often look at something with a whole new light. i would say 90% of things i have read/heard here are not what i call accurate/useful, but those 10% are just so golden and unique it makes listening to the other 90% worth it. i have had my head just turned inside out by some of the strange things they do here, which in the end took my western ego and bitch slapped it back to the corner where it belongs.
it all makes me think about how badly the native people in the southern americas were treated and how they were essentially treated as idots, despite the fact they were some of the finest botanists this world has ever known. i tell myself that daily to try and keep an open mind. the stuff they say doesnt always seem right, but i have learned more about plant biology reading texts about poisonous monoculture based agriculture than any other, and its just as easy to transfer that knowledge over to something clean and more financially logical.
all these teachers that have been doing it for years bring something to the table. they may have big egos and seem old fashioned, but there will always be tricks to be learned from them. Even if they are not to do with their respected field. I learned how to dog fuck and get by without doing work from my high school teachers, they unintentionally showed me their ways, and i am grateful for that. at schools here the best thing would likely be making contacts.
and as an update, i found a better place willing to accept my foreign DNA and they seem ti have more going on for fruit varieties. once our hous eis built i will get right into it.
[quote=“Pingdong”]
i export plants, I don’t deal with the table fruit market at all, nor will i ever. even so I need to learn local skillsets and knowledge. [/quote]
Well, that might be a big problem right there. Some of the fruit here is far higher quality than varieties grown elsewhere, and from the Taiwanese farmer’s perspective, and the agricultural bureau’s, exporting the plants would likely be seen as counterproductive.
