Return to the small mountain village in 1986

Boss Liang’s family did grow navel oranges, but not many. They did not contract the mountain land, but transformed their own mountain forest land into a navel orange forest.

Navel oranges are expensive and everyone wants to grow them, so they are hard to find here. But Boss Liang is indeed someone who dares to open a restaurant in the town and has a very flexible mind.

Since there is no extra mountain land for growing navel oranges, he will start a navel orange seedling business!

Seedlings occupy a small area, and a large number of fruit seedlings can be grafted into one acre of land. Once a batch of fruit seedlings are sold, another batch can be planted.

The technique of grafting is not difficult for those who have mastered it, but it is difficult for those who don't know it. Once you are familiar with it and know how to start, how to connect, and how to tie it up, it will be just that. Not only is it easy, but the success rate is also high.

Gao Mingcheng saw that in a mountainous area at the foot of the mountain, there were dense fruit seedlings planted everywhere.

These fruit seedlings are divided into two types. One is the rootstock that has not yet been grafted. The rootstock used by Boss Liang’s family is wolfberry thorn. The wolfberry thorn has good affinity and has a high success rate in grafting navel oranges.

Mentioning the scientific name, some people may not know what kind of plant the wolfberry thorn is, but if you describe its appearance, most people in the village may suddenly realize it and say that it is a smelly orange thorn.

The wolfberry thorn is a tree that is very similar to the orange tree. The difference is that it is covered with thorns, has fewer leaves, and produces small fruits. There is no pulp in it, but many seeds.

Take out the seeds from the mature fruits and plant them. When the trees are almost tall, they can be used as rootstocks for grafting.

In addition to wolfberry thorns, there are also grafted navel orange seedlings in this field. The wolfberry thorns are used as rootstocks, and the navel orange branches are taken as scions. After successful grafting, it will be a new navel orange tree.

These fruit seedlings are still very small, and they were grafted during the spring equinox this year. It is now mid-September, and the growth of the whole fruit seedlings seems to be okay.

Gao Mingcheng personally saw the growth of the fruit seedlings in the field. After asking for a price, he decided to buy a batch of fruit seedlings and go home.

These fruit seedlings are planted densely together, and each fruit seedling is only about the size of a chopstick. After Gao Mingcheng buys them and plants them, the fruit trees will bear fruit in the third year.

But under normal circumstances, the fruit in the first year of fruiting has a very average taste. It is not until the fourth year or above, when the fruit trees are mature, that the fruits produced at this time are more delicious. Next, if there is no disease or disaster, the life span of the navel orange fruit tree can be as long as forty to fifty years.

Ideally, it can be said that the grandfather planted the tree and the grandson enjoyed the blessing.

Although he had agreed with Boss Liang to buy two hundred fruit seedlings, Gao Mingcheng was not in a hurry to have the seedlings dug out of the ground now.

He planned to come here tomorrow morning, buy the fruit seedlings, and then drive directly back to Gaojiacun.

The business was done, and Boss Liang was very happy. He called Gao Mingcheng to sit at his parents' house, and then took Gao Mingcheng to his navel orange grove for a walk.

Navel oranges are mature and marketed from mid-September to early October. Now they are mature, but the skin is still green. After hanging on the fruit tree for a while, the skin will slowly turn orange, which will look better. The pulp will also taste better.

Walking in the navel orange forest, Gao Mingcheng only felt the fragrance. He saw that some of Boss Liang's trees were taller than him, and some were only as high as his shoulders. Each tree was full of fruits, causing the branches to hang down unbearably.

When Gao Mingcheng saw the dense fruits, he thought that Boss Liang was reluctant to thin the fruits. Therefore, although the fruits grew densely, each orange was too small.

In his impression, the best navel oranges can be as big as his hand.

I was secretly criticizing Boss Liang for being stingy, but he saw Boss Liang reaching out to pick two oranges and handing one to Gao Mingcheng.

Boss Liang said grandly: "Brother Mingcheng, you bought my fruit seedlings, and the oranges you grew are exactly the same as mine! I hope you keep them delicious and easy to sell!"

Boss Liang peeled an orange by himself. The skin was a bit thick, but he also had strong nails, so he had to peel it off.

When the orange peel is peeled off, a fine mist of water will spray out from the orange peel. This is essential oil, which smells particularly fragrant. Orange essential oil can also be extracted from the orange peel through scientific means.

Amid the delicate fragrance, Gao Mingcheng tasted the first navel orange of the year, freshly picked from the tree and 100% fresh!
The orange peel is still green, and the color of the orange flesh is also relatively light. It tastes very watery, but the sour taste is also very obvious. At the top of the navel orange, there is a protruding place like a belly button. After peeling it off, the inside looks like It looks like a small, unripe orange.

This is edible, but the taste is just average.

Boss Liang also seemed to be sore, his eyes and eyebrows were a little squeezed together. He quickly said respectfully: "This is just ripe. In ten days and a half, it won't be so sore! By the end of the month, it will be There will be big bosses who will drive over to collect the goods. They are very powerful. They want to take these oranges to Xiangjiang and sell them, saying they want to earn foreign exchange!"

Gao Mingcheng asked: "How much did you sell it to them for?"

Boss Liang did not hide it from him. After all, this was not a secret. He said openly: "It depends on the quality of the oranges. If the oranges are in good condition, the local price is two yuan per catty! If the oranges are in average condition, they can be sold. It’s between one yuan and one five yuan. As for the worse ones, the big bosses won’t want them, so we can only keep them for ourselves or transport them to nearby counties and cities to sell them.”

"My family has little mountainous land, so we don't earn much from selling oranges. The party secretary of our village, who contracted a mountain, can earn this amount in a year!"

Boss Liang held out three fingers excitedly, his eyes full of envy.

"Brother Mingcheng, how much do you think this is?"

When Gao Mingcheng heard this, he couldn't help but laugh. He thought, you have already extended three fingers, how can I not guess?
He said directly: "Three hundred thousand! If you make three hundred thousand a year, then your village party secretary is very powerful!"

Boss Liang looked at Gao Mingcheng and smiled after a moment. He said: "Brother Mingcheng is indeed a well-informed person. How dare some people guess 300,000? It seems impossible to guess 30,000! There is a person It’s funny, he guessed 3,000 yuan!”

Boss Liang smiled rudely, as if he was still mocking the man for his low vision.

But in an era when a household worth ten thousand yuan was extremely rare, and in an era when most people's income was very low, for some people, making three thousand yuan a year from selling fruits was already very good.

But the benefits of navel oranges go far beyond that!

Many people see the benefits of navel oranges, so they buy fruit seedlings and start planting navel oranges, hoping that they can also make a lot of money.

But there are risks in planting and breeding!

Sometimes high investment does not bring high returns!

Before departure, Gao Mingcheng originally planned to buy only a hundred fruit seedlings, but when he arrived at the field, he found that each fruit seedling was very small, and one hundred fruit seedlings was only such a big bundle. Boss Liang said that everyone else wanted to buy two hundred fruit seedlings. I bought more than one tree.

Gao Mingcheng considered that not all of these fruit seedlings would survive after they were planted, and there must be some loss, so he bought two hundred of them.

It’s not that he’s reluctant to buy more, but that if he wants to grow navel oranges well, they need to be widely spaced. After all, ideally, the lifespan of navel oranges is as long as forty or fifty years, and they will still be in peak production after more than ten years. , a tree can bear hundreds to one thousand kilograms of fruit in one year! If you plant too densely now, it will affect future growth.

Gao Mingcheng visited Boss Liang's village and asked Boss Liang about the tips for growing navel oranges, how to prune branches, how to fertilize, etc.

Since the two were far apart and had no direct competitive relationship, and Gao Mingcheng was very good at talking, Boss Liang spoke openly.

Gao Mingcheng kept it in mind, but he didn't believe it completely. For example, in the case of fruit thinning, he would definitely be more ruthless than Boss Liang.

Boss Liang only saw the immediate benefits, and only wanted to produce more fruits and sell them for more money, but he did not expect that only good fruits were valuable, and secondary fruits were worthless, and they also squeezed the nutrients of the fruit trees.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, the two returned to town. Gao Mingcheng had dinner at Boss Liang's place again and stayed one night. Early the next morning, after eating a bowl of rice noodles, Gao Mingcheng went with Boss Liang. In the village, it was only half past six in the morning when they arrived, but Boss Liang's parents had already gone to the ground to dig out the fruit seedlings and tied them with straw at half past five.

Boss Liang pointed to the fruit seedlings on the ground and said: "These fruit seedlings are in bundles of twenty. Brother Mingcheng can count them. You will definitely not miss one!"

Gao Mingcheng didn't want to save face and didn't count. He directly picked up a bundle and took a quick look. He knew that there were indeed twenty trees in this bundle. By comparing its size with the others, he knew that the number should be That's right.

Because of the long distance, Gao Mingcheng specially asked them to leave some extra soil at the roots of the fruit seedlings.

Gao Mingcheng was quite satisfied with the condition of these fruit seedlings and said with a smile: "Boss Liang is a real businessman, so of course I trust you. I rarely come to Gannan, and the fruit seedlings I bought will take at least three years to bear fruit. It’s not easy to eat navel oranges!”

"Boss Liang, I plan to buy some navel oranges from you and take them back to my family."

Boss Liang was stunned for a moment, then said: "But I'm not too familiar with it yet..."

Gao Mingcheng waved his hand and said, "It's okay. I'll just pick some and taste them. You can calculate the land price for me."

He was not polite. After getting Boss Liang's permission, he directly took a snakeskin bag and went to the navel orange forest to pick it.

Although it was early, the sky was already bright. Gao Mingcheng had good eyesight and specialized in picking big and ripe ones. He did not pick too many. He stopped after the snakeskin bag was full.

Everyone who sells vegetables in the village has a scale, let alone the fruit seller. After Gao Mingcheng said he wanted to buy fruit, Boss Liang's father went to his house to get a scale.

When I put it on the scale, it weighed a little over fifty-two pounds.

Boss Liang said: "Brother Mingcheng, I'll give it to you if it's more than two kilograms. It only costs you a hundred yuan."

"Okay!" Gao Mingcheng took out his wallet and paid for the fruits and seedlings.

If the navel oranges were not fully ripe yet and the taste was a bit sour, he would have planned to buy more, uh, at least a few hundred kilograms!

It's a pity that the season is not exactly right.

He loaded the navel oranges and seedlings into the car, covered the seedlings with straw to provide shade, and then prepared to leave.

"Boss Liang, goodbye!" Gao Mingcheng waved goodbye to Boss Liang's family.

"Hey, brother Mingcheng, come on!" Boss Liang also greeted happily. Everyone would be happy if they could make a business.

After Gao Mingcheng successfully bought the fruit seedlings, he did not stop on the road and drove all the way to Gaojiacun.

He had to ask for directions when he came, which took a lot of time. It was more convenient when he went back. The two places are nearly three hundred kilometers apart. If you take the highway in later generations, it will naturally be faster, but there is no highway for you to go now. In addition, the speed of the car was relatively slow, so even if Gao Mingcheng hurried and hurried, it was already after two o'clock in the afternoon when he arrived at Gaojiacun.

In order to rush back early, he only stopped for one meal along the way, and now he was a little hungry and thirsty. So after parking the car in front of his house, Gao Mingcheng ran into the yard, directly fetched a bucket of well water, and then drank it with a ladle.

You shouldn’t drink raw water in the mountains, but this is not the case with well water. In summer, many people drink well water directly in order to save firewood.

The well water is cool and thirst-quenching, with a hint of sweetness.

As soon as Gao Mingcheng rested for a while, Chen Dasong came over.

Chen Dasong had already received instructions from Gao Mingcheng and had made preparations at home in advance.

After seeing Gao Mingcheng, Chen Dasong said: "Mingcheng, I have asked Duoxi to go to the village to call people. You said that the fruit seedlings should be planted as soon as possible, so I called three people. Plus a few of us, it should be That’s about it.”

Gao Mingcheng nodded and said: "Okay, later you all take the hoes and buckets and ride in my car. From here to the top of the mountain, you can still drive for a while. When you can't drive anymore, you can get off the car and walk over." "

"Okay." Chen Dasong nodded, and seeing that Gao Mingcheng seemed a little tired, he asked Gao Mingcheng if he wanted to take a rest.

Gao Mingcheng said: "Don't rest, plant as soon as possible. After planting, I will have dinner at your house and then go back to the county. I will ask my aunt to cook more food later. Let's cook it early!"

Chen Dasong understood. Before anyone else came, he went back to his home and asked Aunt Liu to cook more food at night.

When Chen Dasong came back, he came with several other people, all of whom were acquaintances in the village. When Gao Mingcheng saw him, they all nodded in greeting and gave each of them a pack of cigarettes.

"Mingcheng, I happen to have some French pancakes at home. You should eat them first to fill your stomach." Chen Dasong handed Gao Mingcheng two pieces of French pancakes.

French cakes are also a specialty here. They have a fluffy texture and good taste. Today's French cakes are not very sweet, unlike later generations of French cakes, where the white sugar seems to be free.

Gao Mingcheng gnawed on the French bread and asked everyone to get their tools and get on the bus. Those who couldn't fit in the carriage sat on the side of the carriage.

Gao Mingcheng drove towards Xiaofu Mountain. He drove along the road at the foot of the mountain, but he only drove for seven or eight minutes. The road ahead was too narrow and he could not continue driving.

Gao Mingcheng stared at the front for a moment and then said: "Uncle Chen, when the late rice is harvested, you call a few people to clear this road. In the future, you will go into the mountains to take care of the orange trees and pick oranges. No One path won’t work.”

Building roads is a big project, but the people who come to help with the work are very happy, because having work to do means making money. (End of chapter)