5th July 2017. This is Adamson, the farm leader showing me how he is using a technique called air layering to produce new apple rootstock. Last year we bought our rootstock so they are using many systems to produce our own. We have about 8000 apple seedlings at
6th Sept 2015: These are newly grafted mango. We have five varieties. These are now ready for planting but we will wait for the rains and people will plant at the end of January. In total we expect to have over 20,000 improved variety fruit tree seedlings.
22nd June 2015: If you look through our previous 1999 blips you will realize that our main focus in on wells, pumps and water. Now that we have given clean, safe drinking water to maybe 500,000 of the poorest, we realize that we can make use
17th May 2015: This is Wezzie (with a new hairstyle), who is in charge of orchards, seeds and accounts, sorting grafted mango that have come from the greenhouse to make way for more action.
27th April 2015: Here Laston is teaching new girl Maggie about the process of budding. Up to now she has come to us to do the potting as a piecework job. She is such a good worker that is was a no brainer that we should take her
4th March 2015: These are the guys on the farm sorting mango shoots. The seeds were sown earlier but they produce a number of shoots which are being divided for planting back in the tubes. A delicate operation. These will be put in greenhouses and later be grafted
12th January 2015: Today its budded Citrus. We plant lemon seeds for rootstock then slice buds from Good variety citruses and attach them to the stem of the rootstock. We end up with better orange, lemons, tangerines, satsumas, limes and kumquats and many varieties of each.
8th January 2015: Since we arrived in Malawi I always had a view that Malawi should contribute to its own development. Pumps and wells are what we are there for and are free to everyone. However we started farming to show what could be grown and how
7th December 2014: This is a new shed for seedlings. The plan is not to have them too hot or too cold. Later it will have sides but there's no rush just now.
20th September 2014: Now that we have 25,000 improved variety fruit tree seedlings propagated where do we put them. We have the hot dry season coming up so we will have to build a shade for them. We will use local grass in preference to netting which
13th September 2014: These guys are relentless. They are so systematic and of course have to be. We had a team building meeting at the beginning of the year to look at trying to organise our production. I asked if we could REALLY produce 15,000 seedlings for January 2015. One
9th September 2014: This is one of our greenhouses where improved variety mango have beed grafted onto local rootstock. The local mango seeds are sown in polythene tubes, they have grown and now the grafts have taken as you can see. The little plastic bags prevent water