Mitch, Jimbaran writes: I really enjoy your gardening column in the Bali Advertiser and I was wondering if you could tell me where I can get fertilizer for my plants and lawn in Bali as I have tried every where and all I have been able to find is small packets of NPK at Ace Hardware. I live in Jimbaran up the top, Taman Griya and there is a fair bit of limestone, or maybe it is the remnants left over from building. I just want a general fertilizer for my palms and lawn.
There is almost certainly limestone there, also possibly uplifted fossil coral. Given the local builders’ habit of burying unused cement and builder’s rubble instead of taking it away you will almost certainly have alkaline soil.
I live in Sanur with much the same problem. Advice re fertilizer: Use Neem compost as liberally as you can afford to do it. You can’t ‘overdo’ this stuff as it is organic as well as being a first rate natural pesticide/insecticide. You might also look at planting a few Neem trees in your garden.
Neem products including neem cake fertilizer are available at Sunrise School at Kerobokan. There is a Neem (Intaran in Balinese) shop just outside its gates. If what you want isn’t on display, ask for it. They do not display all their stuff, especially the bulkier lines.
Ask if you can buy in bulk (ie: by the truckload) as packaged stuff is in small quantities and correspondingly more expensive. Around the palms apply it as a mulch (5 cm deep). Top dress the lawns lightly by scattering over the grass on a regular basis (weekly/fortnightly) and water it in.
If at any time you wish to buy chemical fertilizer in reasonable quantities at better prices, look for it at roadside nurseries. There are specialist lawn and palm outlets along Jalan Hang Tua between Renon and Sanur.
Citrus Killer
Have you bought any mandarin oranges lately which have been hard, sour and almost juiceless (eg: Jeruk Lumajang)? Lately I have found there to be one or two like this. Alas! Indonesia’s citrus orchards are under threat from a devastating disease. Courtesy of Radio Australia who supplied the information below, I reprint an edited version of their information.
Farmers on Indonesia’s main island of Java should now be harvesting their crop of small mandarins, but most trees have been pulled out or are still standing infected by a devastating disease. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) believes it may have the answer to restoring healthy crops.
Citrus greening, (known as huanglongbing in Asia), has spread rapidly in the past 10 years. Australia does not have the disease yet, but scientists warn it could arrive if the insect that carries it is blown in on the wind, or comes here through tourism. This is just one of the diseases that may arrive if foolish tourists try to smuggle fruit past Australia’s quarantine stations. Don’t even think of doing this!
Australia’s agricultural protection is one of the reasons for an aid project with Indonesia to find a solution for citrus greening. This disease is also devastating citrus orchards in the United States. The disease is a bacterium spread by the psyllid insect that sucks the sap and kills a plant’s food-carrying veins, leaving the fruit barely edible. Psyllids are found in Australia but as yet have not encountered the bacterium.
Dr Siti Subandaya, who leads the ACIAR project in Indonesia, says the mandarins become “more sour and hard”. ACIAR staff have had direct experience of the disease’s effects: The farmer employed to oversee the research field trials outside Yogyakarta went bankrupt after 35 years of citrus growing when he had to destroy crops three times. Dr Subandaya, of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, says a tree infected from the seedling stage will never bear fruit. Trees die within a few years.
Intercropping
The team’s breakthrough came when it found citrus trees intercropped with the sweet, fragrant, tropical, guava fruit experienced a dramatic fall in insect numbers. “So we can get quite good income from both citrus and guava,” Dr Subandaya said.
Entomologist Dr Andi Trisyono says another trial in which trees are sprayed with mineral oil has seen the insects suffocated within one or two weeks. Others are discouraged from laying eggs. Indonesian authorities have yet to approve use of mineral oil on citrus. Without these efforts, it takes one small psyllid insect only one hour to infect a tree.
ACIAR citrus trials are also being conducted in Vietnam where orchardists also face this problem.
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