It’s always great to be in the planting mood. Unfortunately, the road to begin planting and caring for your plants can’t materialise if you have lots of offending trees in the way. Now don’t get me wrong. All trees serve a particular purpose. After all, they help sequester atmospheric carbon and lock them in the ground. As you can see in the photo below; there are just tonnes of them in the vicinity.
However, if you have a small piece of land, every single square feet of earth matters. I have no choice but to only maintain productive fruit trees, fodder trees, supportive trees (that indirectly benefits a host of life in a nutrient cycle such as leguminous ones) and just about anything that gives a yield. Hence, the need to begin chopping down all unnecessary trees, or pokok hutan as the locals call it. Most plentiful found here are the wild figs.
These trees block out the sun and prevent durian trees from extending its branches. They also affect fruit formation on some carambola trees. Bad behaviour. The more sun I have kissing the ground, the more opportunities I have to host diverse plant types over a period of succession in the area, before the primary fruit trees block out the sun again. But by then, I would already have fruits as my main yield. Only then I can consider planting other shade-loving shrubs or trees with secondary yields.
There’s this particular lone oil palm tree smack right between two durian trees taking up expensive real estate. I have enlisted the help of a friend to bring it down for good. It was already producing fruits but what have I got to do with just one tree? The fruitlets could have benefitted chickens for they are packed with Vitamin E and antioxidants. Unfortunately, the benefits of not having an oil palm tree far outweigh the need to have it, especially if it’s just one on a small land. So off it goes.
If I have at least between 3 to 6 acres of land, it would have been ideal to maintain a Zone 4 or 5 section (which I can only drool thinking of). Should that be the case, I may even have a couple of oil palm trees in there just for exhibits, or even keep some in Zone 2 for the chickens. By the way, they give really good shade as well.
I was also thinking if I have foreign guests over in a homestay setup, they could have a better look at the very “baby” Theresa Kok is fighting hard to defend. In the end, I reckon, they would fare better just walking over to my neighbour’s 20 acre oil palm plantation right next door and ogle at the controversial beauty for all they want.
I need the returns. I need the financial support albeit, only materialised in a given time. But I need it real bad. For that, I need the space.
The trunk of the oil palm tree is actually soft pulp-like wood. Sounds and look easy to cut, but believe me it isn’t. I reckon both of us took quite awhile to strip it down, removing the fronds one by one. Just when we got the hang of it, we have to stop because the chain saw needs sharpening. This would take some time. The shredded parts would make for very good compost material.
