Gongcheng Qingmei (Plum)

Gongcheng Qingmei

　　Gongcheng Town is one of the localities in our county implementing the provincial People's Congress motion project “One Township, One Product” for Qingmei (plum) cultivation. Last year, the newly planted Qingmei area covered 3,100 mu, involving 500 farming households, while the area for technical improvement and variety replacement reached 800 mu, involving 53 households. The total area for both planting and replacement was 3,900 mu, averaging 7.05 mu per household, with participating households accounting for 13.7% of the town’s total (coverage rate). To ensure the smooth implementation of the “One Township, One Product” project, last year, with assistance from the county agriculture bureau, the town’s agricultural technology station cultivated 170,000 grafted Qingmei seedlings, including varieties such as Soft Branch Large Grain Plum, Bald Eagle, Tianshui Plum, and some Powdered White Plum, thereby guaranteeing the seedling supply for the project. The town placed great emphasis on training in Qingmei planting techniques. It successively invited Associate Professor Weng Shuzhang from the Horticulture Department of Huazhong Agricultural University, Professor Gan Liansheng from the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, as well as technical personnel from the county agriculture bureau, to hold eight technical training sessions. These sessions trained over 780 people and distributed more than 3,000 copies of Qingmei cultivation technical materials. In 2001, the project planned to plant 2,500 new mu, renovate 1,000 mu of low-yield and inferior plum orchards, and involve 420 households. The household coverage rate for the project was 10.45%, with an average of 8.3 mu planted or replaced per household. Four demonstration sites were established, covering 500 mu and involving 25 households, located in the Baima, Hecun, Fengshan, and Dalang village committees. Project implementation focused on 28 natural villages within the Baima and Hecun village committees, where mobilization meetings for planting were held. Most of the natural villages had already allocated mountainous land for planting. Additionally, this spring, the town’s agricultural technology station carried out unified planning, primarily arranging for five households to manage and cultivate 100,000 Qingmei seedlings from seeds. Other households across the town collectively cultivated another 100,000 seedlings, resulting in a total of 200,000 seedlings uniformly arranged by the agricultural technology station, sufficient to supply over 5,000 mu of land. On July 4, during our inspection, the survival rate of seedlings at all sites was over 90%, and the Qingmei seedlings planted last year were growing normally, with a survival rate also above 95%. (Xinxing County)