Investigations about soil deficiency and something for the balsa bashers

One of the things I did this week was visit the Balsa factory, plant nursery near Kokopo.
A significant area of balsa trees are grown in ENB. The balsa wood factory manufactures various types sheet balsa for aircraft manufacture and the marine industries. Much of it is end grain balsa fixed in large sheets and used as part of laminate stucture.
 I went to the nursery to find out what type of they soil mix they are using but also since I use a lot of balsa to see how its grown.
Balsa has "hard seed" like clover, or gorse. So before sowing the seed needs to be scarified (treated in someway) to improve germination. Normally about 25% of balsa seed germinates straight away, the rest over a period of about 5 weeks. To improve uniformity in the nursery, the seed is scarified, in this case heated to a set temperature for a certain number of hours. The treatment improves germination to about 80%, in 6 days but means that the seed, which is moist, needs to be sown by hand. Also at least two or three seeds are sown into each pot, and after germination, "thinned" to one. I observed a lot of pots with nothing germinated after 2 weeks in the germination room. So the scarification technique, while it improves germination, still causes some "wasted" work.

Germination room

After a few weeks in the germination room the plants are put out into a "greenhouse" environment for another 3 or so weeks.
Photos shows trays of plants growing on in greenhouse and stacks of trays filled with soil mix ready for sowing.

Plants are then put out into a hardening area for up to 2 months; total growing time about 4 months.

There is year round propagation and planting going on.  Production cycle for a plantation is about 6 years from planting.
The visit was worthwhile, in other ways, in that I found out who supplies a range of horticultural fertilizers, as well as fungicides and insecticides. It often takes a while to find out who the suppliers are here.
I've noticed that some of the brassica's at the market have hollow stems, a sure sign of Boron deficiency. The observation corresponds with what I've observed on a couple of farms. A brief literature search revealed that Phosphate and Boron deficiencies are quite common in many of the soils of PNG, including the soils of  ENB.
As a consequence I'm going to start recommending to farmers that they use an NPK fertilizer with Boron in it.  The best farmers use fertilizers, many others don't. Much of the land around Kokopo has been used for plantation crops, (coconuts, cocoa, and balsa more recently) for over 100 years. Thus while the soils are volcanic they are usually quite thin in places and a bit depleted. For subsistence growing this is ok, but not for crops that are going to be marketed.

Neli, at the office, has two nieces who are getting married soon. So we've been discussing bride prices and ceremonies. The local tribe (Tolai's) have a matri-lineal inheritance system, with inheritance of land going down through the women in the tribe.
Paying a Bride price is still common. Around Kokopo up to 10,000 Kina ($5,000 NZ) can be paid. In other parts of PNG the bride price can be up to 60,000 Kina, depending on how much education the woman has, whether she has a job, etc, etc.
Extended family are usually involved in providing money for the wedding ceremony, etc. And as in NZ providing stuff to set up home. Food for the ceremony is provided by the brides family. All up the costs seem to be similar to a better wedding in NZ but most of it paid for by contributions from the extended family.

As a treat, a group of us went out to dinner at Kokopo Beach Bungalow Resort. Once a month they have on Saturday night, an Indian smorgasbord.
A night of enjoyable food and catching up on each others time in ENB.  We managed to negotiate that the resort took us back to our house in Seaview, as no PMVs after about 6 pm. A very enjoyable evening and much appreciated!!