Nghe An gardeners earn tens of millions of dong from grapefruit flowers

Grapefruit flower season lasts about 1.5 - 2 months. Photo: TP

The grapefruit flower season lasts from February to the end of March of the lunar calendar with about 3-4 flower crops. This year, from mid-February until now, the weather has been favorable, so the grapefruit flower season has been good. The flowers are densely packed in clusters, blooming white on the tree. In fact, too much flower production will not ensure the quality of the fruit as well as be suitable for the growth of the tree, many gardeners have to cut off some flowers, or the flowers that cannot be pollinated will wither, die and fall off.

“Usually, we only select 50-60 fruits from each grapefruit tree to ensure the appearance, quality and growth of the tree. Meanwhile, each grapefruit tree like this season has countless flowers, if pollinated, it will produce thousands of fruits. Therefore, we have to prune to ensure quality,” said Mr. Dam Duy Tu, owner of an organic fruit farm in Quynh Tam commune (Quynh Luu).

wrong flower — This year, the grapefruit trees are full of flowers, each tree has thousands of flowers but the gardener only selects 100 flowers for pollination and fruit setting. Photo: TP

Like last year, Mr. Tu's 600-tree grapefruit garden was in full bloom, with one batch after another falling all over the ground. The rest bore fruit, but the number of fruits was too much and had to be pruned. This year, when a medicinal plant production facility came to his garden to discuss purchasing grapefruit flowers, Mr. Tu was very excited.

“Before, I let the flowers fall or had to prune them and throw them all over the garden, which was a waste. Now they buy them, so I have mobilized workers to harvest the flowers to sell to them. Grapefruit trees produce many batches of flowers, based on my many years of gardening experience, I choose the best batch of flowers with the highest pollination ability to produce fruit,” said Mr. Tu.

This year's grapefruit flower season alone, Mr. Tu's farm collected more than 300 kg of flowers, with a selling price of 35,000 VND/kg, he earned over 10 million VND.

Growing grapefruit for many years, but this year, Mr. Bui Van Khanh, the owner of a farm in Do Thanh commune (Yen Thanh) often calculates so that the grapefruit garden does not ripen at the same time, finding ways to make the grapefruit flower, bear fruit, and ripen sporadically at the right times. At the same time, he has to handle it so that the grapefruit flower and bear fruit at the top of the branches. Therefore, pruning grapefruit flowers is mandatory in the process of caring for grapefruit for fruit.

“A grapefruit tree in full bloom has thousands, even several thousand flowers. However, it is enough to keep 30 to 50 flowers on the tree. When harvesting grapefruit flowers, growers also have a purpose and calculate carefully, they only pick flowers up to the second crop and then stop to save the tree to bear fruit.

Currently, 1kg of grapefruit flowers costs from 35,000-40,000 VND/kg. Photo: TP

Each tree like that, if harvested and pruned from all the crops, will also produce about 2-3kg of flowers. With the current selling price, it brings in about 100,000 VND/tree from selling flowers. For large-scale gardens, this is a good source of income," said Mr. Khanh.

Not only large-scale farms but also many small-scale grapefruit growers have additional income from selling fresh grapefruit flowers to medicinal processing facilities.

Ms. Hoang Thi Hien, a resident of Quynh Thang commune (Quynh Luu) said: “My family has 10 grapefruit trees, mainly grown for family use and not for sale on the market. This season, when the grapefruit flowers are in full bloom, I prune them so that the tree can concentrate its nutrients on growing the fruit. Each grapefruit tree, with 2 kg of flowers cut, brings in nearly 1 million VND for the medicinal processing facility, and has extra money to buy fertilizer for the grapefruit.”

Grapefruit flowers and young grapefruit peels are raw materials to produce herbal products such as grapefruit essential oil, shampoo, conditioner... Photo: TP

In the northern provinces, during the pomelo flower season, gardeners often trim flowers to sell to traders, mainly for table decoration, for vases, or for tea infusion, requiring flowers to be cut when they are just budding, fresh, with branches, and not crushed. Therefore, the price of flowers is quite high, 100,000-150,000 VND/kg, many gardeners earn hundreds of millions from selling pomelo flowers.

In Nghe An, this year is the first season that grapefruit growers sell flowers to medicinal plant production facilities. Grapefruit flowers are bought in “buckets” (buds, fully bloomed flowers and fallen petals) for 35,000-40,000 VND/kg. After purchasing, the production facilities will classify, wash and distill grapefruit essential oil to make shampoo, conditioner, perfume, etc.

Ms. Tran Thi Vui, owner of a medicinal herb processing facility in Do Thanh commune (Yen Thanh) said: “Our main products are herbal shampoo and conditioner, in which grapefruit flowers and young grapefruit are the main ingredients. When entering the grapefruit flower season this year, we announced the purchase to households and grapefruit farms. We buy at the garden and do not limit the quantity. This helps people have more income and increase the value of grapefruit trees.”

Source: https://baonghean.vn/nha-vuon-nghe-an-kiem-ca-chuc-trieu-dong-tu-hoa-buoi-10294175.html