1994: Vegetable farmers strike back

Chapter 58 Breeding and Seed Retention
"Lao Mao, I asked you to buy some good food, and this is what you bought! Winter melon! Winter melon! Winter melon! Do I look like a winter melon?!"

"Even the boss noticed this time and specifically asked how many days we've been out of vegetables. How am I supposed to explain this to him? If you keep going on like this, it's going to be very difficult for me to handle!"

In the factory, Mao Liangcai was scolded again. In the end, he spent some money to avoid disaster and handed a red envelope to Manager Huang. After getting a guarantee, he walked out in shame.

But we can't keep fooling around any longer.

Early the next morning, Mao Liangcai deliberately got up early and arrived at the stall of Chen Cainong and others after two o'clock.

The one with the most vegetables is Chen the vegetable farmer and the one next to him. Only these two people can meet his needs.

After a moment of hesitation, he finally asked Chen, the vegetable farmer whose vegetables looked better, "How much water spinach is there today?"

Chen Jiazhi looked at him in surprise. This man actually came again, but since he was a guest, he should not be too excessive even if he had given in.

"Two dollars and a half."

After hearing his quotation, the two old customers standing by were slightly surprised. This quotation was different from theirs!

"Pretend it, 80 kilograms of water spinach."

But Mao Liangcai breathed a sigh of relief. The price was the same as yesterday. Vegetable prices had generally risen again today, but Chen the vegetable farmer had not deliberately raised the price. He had been prepared to be severely ripped off.

After saying that, he took out 200 yuan, gave a delivery address, and left. Staying any longer would only make him more embarrassed.

"Mr. Chen, how much did you charge me for the water spinach?" asked an old customer.

Chen Jiazhi smiled and said, "It's two dollars and thirty cents, as we agreed on earlier. You're all regular customers, buying my vegetables every day and taking care of my business when sales are slow, so naturally you deserve preferential treatment!"

"Sure, pretty boy, you're being frank about it."

The two old customers felt a little relieved. For the same dish, others ordered much more quantity than him, but the price was still not as favorable as his. This was not only real profit, but also an additional psychological satisfaction. After returning home, they could brag about it to their family members. In the market, he still had some face.

Water spinach is already selling for two yuan and thirty cents, you can imagine how much of a shortage of vegetables there is in the market.

Li Mingkun and Guo Mancang only buy a few dozen kilograms of vegetables every day, and it takes less than half an hour to get to the market before they get home from get off work.

Sometimes when I meet a big client, I can buy the whole deal in one go, and it may only take more than ten minutes.

They also want to last as long as Chen Jiazhi and Yi Dinggan!

As is the case now, the longer it lasts, the more money you make.

In fact, Chen Jiazhi and Yi Dinggan could not hold on for long. On the last morning of May, they had cleared out all the vegetables before four o'clock.

"Brother, I'm going to buy meat today."

Yi Dinggan was still brooding over what happened yesterday morning. They had clearly bought the items together, but in the end Chen Jiazhi got all the credit. This morning he sold more than he did yesterday, so he wanted to show off a little.

"Okay, I'll go get a load of sawdust. We're running out of fuel at home."

The two of them were delayed for another half an hour before they rode their bikes home. Chen Jiazhi looked at the vegetables that Yi Dinggan had bought, which were also seafood, including oysters and the pomfret he had bought before.

"Brother Yi, how much did it cost? Let's split it in half."

"No need, go back and let your second sister see it. I am willing to spend money too."

After arriving home, the time was almost the same as the previous two days, past 5 o'clock. Li Xiu and Chen Jiafang were both cooking. Yi Dinggan proudly placed oysters and sea fish in front of Chen Jiafang.

"I made it for lunch."

"how much did you spend?"

"65 dollars."

"What are you thinking? You just spent 60 on seafood yesterday, and you're buying more today. Can't you buy something else? I think you're crazy!"

"I……"

Chen Jiazhi pulled Yi Dinggan, who looked aggrieved, to the front door to smoke, and then gave him another 35 yuan. Yi Dinggan did not hesitate to accept the money this time. This discrimination was too harsh.

After smoking, Chen Jiazhi went back to the house and counted the money. Including the 35 yuan he gave to Yi Dinggan, he made a total of 698.3 yuan this morning.

Almost 300 kilograms of vegetables were sold for nearly 700 yuan. It’s good that the vegetable prices are high!
The price changes every day these days.

29号早上空心菜还只有1.6元/斤，30号涨到2元，31号就直接被拉到了2.3元。

Chen Jiazhi only had one customer for the choy sum, so he deliberately controlled the price increase, but it was still 2.5 yuan per catty. This price would have been profitable even 20 years ago, let alone now.

For three days, Chen Jiazhi loaded a bicycle with about 300 kilograms every day, but the sales income increased day by day, reaching 492 yuan, 615 yuan and 698 yuan respectively.

Even after deducting the money paid to the agricultural supply store and daily expenses, there was still 1578 yuan left.

After paying next month's rent and paying Ao Dehai and the other man's wages, there will still be a few hundred yuan left, and the fields are still producing vegetables in a steady stream.

It was not until this moment that Chen Jiazhi felt that he had completely gotten out of the predicament, and all that remained was to grow bigger and stronger step by step.

...

The morning was gloomy and a bit stuffy.

Chen Jiazhi went to the field to check and found that the Chinese cabbage and amaranth sown yesterday had sprouted and taken root, so he would sow another crop of amaranth today.

Choy Sum is the planned site No. 6;

The amaranth was planted in plot No. 3. He pulled out the original cowpeas and green beans and re-prepared the land, a total of about 0.5 acres, and sowed them in two days.

The reason for choosing amaranth is that there is the Dragon Boat Festival in mid-June, and June 18th is also after the Dragon Boat Festival, so the market for amaranth should not be bad.

Ao Dehai and his wife are thinning out the Chinese cabbage seedlings. The several batches of Chinese cabbage sown after May 18 have reached the thinning period, and this work is done almost every day.

After each batch of seedlings is thinned out, urea needs to be applied in time to promote rapid growth of leafy vegetables.

After Chen Jiazhi and Ao Dehai discussed the subsequent work for a while, they took out the sprayer and prepared to use the herbicide.

I've sold nearly 1100 kilograms of water spinach in the past few days. All the water spinach in plot 5 has been sold out, freeing up a piece of land. I need to prepare the land in time for the next crop.
As soon as I walked into the field, it started to drizzle. Well, I couldn't apply the medicine.

But he felt that the rain would not stop for a while, so he went home and carried out a bag of urea, put it in a bucket and used it to fertilize the cabbage after thinning out the seedlings.

If the rain lasts longer, you can save the effort of watering.

Now he has six or seven acres of land, which is completely possible for Chen Jiazhi to rotate.

His goal is to produce at least two to three hundred kilograms of vegetables every day from now until National Day, or even more.

And you can't use a bicycle all the time, you have to change to a tricycle, take a driver's license test, etc.

While working, Chen Jiazhi was planning for the future and recalling some major events.

Unfortunately, he spent most of his time dealing with vegetables in his previous life, so he didn't know much about other ways to make money, and he didn't know how to do it.
"We must persist in breeding~"

Three parts depend on seeds and seven parts depend on management. The importance of seeds in the vegetable planting process is beyond doubt.

Chen Jiazhi clearly knows how big the gap is between current seeds and seeds of future generations.

The vegetables we have come into contact with now, such as water spinach, choy sum, loofah, bitter melon, and pakchoy, are very different from the varieties in later generations.

Some of the differences are in output;

Some of them are inferior in stress resistance;
Some of them are not resistant to storage and have a short shelf life...

Moreover, the current seed purchasing channels are very limited, mostly through state-owned units such as supply and marketing cooperatives. The seed performance is average, and the mixing and degradation are relatively serious.

Many people simply use farm varieties, such as Daguqing, which is also mixed and degraded.

Although Chen Jiazhi did not know about seed breeding in his previous life, he saved seeds for himself many times because vegetables were stale in the market, especially Chinese cabbage and kale.

Although the retained seeds are not as good as commercial seeds, their planting performance is not bad either.

After reading several articles in Guangdong Agricultural Science over the past two days, he found that breeding and seed production were actually not far from him, except that there were a few more steps such as seed screening, pollination, and isolation.

Then, by strengthening management, we can purify and rejuvenate existing varieties and maintain their excellent characteristics.

Chen Jiazhi doesn't have many extravagant hopes. He just hopes to be self-sufficient in seeds before there are better alternatives.

It would naturally be better if more and better varieties could be bred in this process.

This is a long process.

(End of this chapter)