Bees for pollination of kiwifruit

Did you know that each hectare of kiwifruit orchard needs 8 bee families for good pollination result during flowering in May?  Bees must be brought after about 10% of flowers opening, not before and their exit should face morning sun to let them get out and work as early as possible. Why are bees needed? Because pollen of male flowers should come in contact with female flowers and intensity of such contact results in more bigger sized kiwifruit at the harvest time. Only well pollinate flowers can produce good sized fruit and for farmers it is very important since the price difference between small and big sized kiwifruit (of say between 75gr/piece and 120gr/piece) can be double.

In Georgia we do not yet have specialized pollination beekeeper contractors. Therefore to be on the safe side, we decided to invest in our own bee program. We collected our bee families in village Mukhuri, Samegrelo area --- place known as beekeeping cluster and just under the Caucasian mountains.

 One interesting fact is that Georgian Grey Bee specie has the longest proboscis (7.2mm) in the world and is known for high honey and wax productivity, fertility of queen bees, resistance to cold winter, long wings, a weak swarming ability, effective collection of nectar and honey even in the conditions of their scarcity, active defense of nests, an ability to work in foggy and drizzly weather

  

Picture: our bees just returned from mountains

Samegrelo Micro-Zone Unaffected by Frost Siege

If you are agricultural entrepreneur looking for new locations in so called "Eastern Europe" to invest in horticultural ventures and develop fruit or vegetables enterprises then you need to read this post and look at exhibited 2 meteo maps.

So far Dutch, English or German horticultural ventures have been focusing on countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland etc. There are several reasons for this such as lower cost of production, promising local market sizes, proximity to their original, home markets, understandable legal and operating environment.

However, there is one more country further east as well as farther south across Black Sea: Georgia. While for political considerations this country is mostly mentioned as  (a distant) Eastern Europe, for climatic and growing conditions it should never be considered together with Eastern Europe.

Georgia's unique climate is made up by 3500m to 5000m high Greater Caucasus mountains range on the north which stops cold Nordic air masses. On its south there is 2500-3500m high Minor Caucasus mountains range which moderate too hot air masses from Arabian deserts. Within Georgia in the west side, there is one particular region called Samegrelo which additionally gets humidity in Summer and warm air in Winter from Black Sea. During recent frost siege over wider region Samegrelo also experienced frosts but not below -3C on 3 nights while during most critical period daytime temperatures mostly maintained +4C...+8C.

In other "normal" years average temperature of coldest month of January is between +5C and +9C.

Now the promised maps. You see Samegrelo as being circled on the east side of Black Sea.

Map 1: while in most of eastern Europe temperatures dropped below -20C, 

Samegrelo area remained positive temperature region

Map 2: Green colored areas are positive temperature areas. 

As you can see that even within Georgia, Samegrelo is the warmest zone.

Maps belong to Swiss based weather forecasting services company Meteoblue AG. 

The author of this entry is horticultural entrepreneur Konstantine Vekua who together with his German and New Zealand friends are developing selected fruits value chains in Samegrelo, Georgia. The company already manages 24ha kiwifruit orchard and plans to develop berries, feijoa and persimmon orchards by the end of year.

To contact me, email: Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge  

Let's check the roots

If you are growing perennial crops, you will have to wait at least 3 years before seeing first crop and first results of your efforts. For some fruit crops this can take 5-7 years. In between you have to think if everything will be fine. Imagine, worrying about what's going to come around in 5 years time! This seems quite a struggle but if you know what signs to watch and check, then it is a lot easier to deal with anxiety. 

Here, after exactly a year, we put out some plants from last year's planting campaign. We wanted to see how well the root system has developed and what we have seen exceeded our expectations. This means everything is going in right direction and we should keep our good work.

Picture: Comparing root volumes of the plant (left) which was planted last year and the plant (right) which we just got from nursery few days ago. A year ago the plant on the left was as small as the one on the right.

Picture: Closer look at the well growing kiwifruit plant

To contact the blogger, email:

Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge 

We Got New Measuring Tools

Professional orchard management is a little science. You depend on what's below and above your soil. You should know what is the level of critical nutrients in the soil but you should also know your soil's acidity and its water holding capacity. Many samples are sent to professional labs every year but modern times offer tools to make some express analyses right in the field.


We bought express pH tester and tensiometer from German company Stelzner. With these, we can check acidity in unlimited number of spots and we can monitor our soil's water holding capacity in several spots. Tensiometer will help us to know how much water/humidity is near the root zone and if irrigation is needed or not. It is great to know what's beneath!

Picture: Water Tensiometer in Our Kiwifruit Orchard



Berlin Fruit Exhibition: Provenance Paradox & Continuous Assurance of Quality

Picture: One of exhibitor's stand in Berlin

Every year Berlin hosts the biggest European trade exhibition of fruits and vegetables. 9000 participants and more than 50000 visitors: it is very Große. We decided to visit it to talk with our future customers, learn about their approaches and just get the sense of trading environment. We went there with the list of questions in our writing pad but for us the most important question was: What should we do to price our kiwifruit (whenever we start to export) according to its quality and taste and not according to the perceptions about the country of its origin.  

What are we talking about here? Well, while quality of the product is important, the quality is not the only factor and buying side will try to justify lower bidding price if the product comes from less known country, or less known country for that product category. Example: one Venezuelan chocolate and cocoa beans producer El Rey supplies leading European chocolate makers with its high quality cocoa but is not able to sell its own chocolate at the same or even similar prices of European chocolates made on the same very cocoa. This is called Provenance Paradox and you can get more examples and more analysis on this from Harvard professor Rohit Deshpandé here http://tinyurl.com/2bhw23x

Is this barrier impossible to overcome for Georgian companies(well, for really quality Georgian companies)? As we talk about Provenance Paradox it is worth mentioning that Swiss watches, German cars and French wines gained and keep their unrivalled reputation through continuous and uninterrupted delivery of quality and over and over and over, every single year since 1855 Château Lafite and Mercedes Benz since 1886 deliver highest imaginable and possible customer satisfaction. Customers just get used to these brands' qualities. Countries are also like brands. So we think that constant delivery of quality leads to absence of any doubts and customers start to affiliate certain products to certain companies and countries.

Georgian companies and particularly their owners and managers should "just" define quality of product as their N:1 priority, make and always keep it. Quality for customers is like a promise which you either keep or break.

Let's give an example. We see in Georgian supermarkets how some X brand puts a nice product promotional display. They look very sophisticated but if we look at some other Y company's display, we see wearing facing materials, edgy corners, glass not being rounded(one can cut a finger) etc. Customers of course notice these differences and make judgements. These judgements are in favour of the company which did not stop just at making a good chocolate and went further to offer a better display or a better packaging i.e. gave more to customers. Quality of even simple product such as fruit consists of 20, 25 or 30 nuances and all these nuances should be thought after from first year, every year.

To Contact the blogger, email:
nergeta@gmail.com 

Setting Up Windshelters

It's March and we are setting up artificial wind shelters in our orchard. They will not let occassional strong winds to break young shoots of our kiwifruit plants.


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Our Blog in Georgian Language

Just to inform our Georgian readers that we will be running blog in Georgian language and it's here: http://www.nergeta-geo.blogspot.com/