Apples

10th May 2016:

Laston the farm boss and Anderton who is our senior fruit tree propagator, with a special interest in apples, travelled over 600km, by bus, to an area called Ntcheu, to buy  two thousand two hundred apple tree root stock.
Now they are planted and later when they have become established they will graft various varieties on.
When I went to Malawi first Everyone said that apples do not grow in Malawi, so I brought rootstock and scions from Seed Savers in Scariff, Co Clare, got their European Passports and got them to grow. 
It wasn't a total success as the termites had a fondness for the roots and we are now down from 10 to 3.
This time we have serious people on the job and hope for better results.
We expect that we will have 2,200 apple trees next year.
I will again bring some scions from Ireland where we have hundreds of varieties and will begin researching the more successful ones.
The sad state of Malawi is that most of their apples and other fruit come from South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Sad but not unusual as the general state of agriculture is pretty poor.
We will do our little bit on a micro scale, but we will do our best.
We expect to exceed last year's 21,000 fruit trees of various varieties produced last year, with six mango varieties leading the way