Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan (Hung Nghia hamlet, Hung Loc commune, Thong Nhat district) feeds weaver ants. Photo: Nhan An This environmentally friendly agricultural model is gradually being applied in Dong Nai. * Persevere with the new direction Mr. Dang Van Chuc (Hung Nghia hamlet, Hung Loc commune, Thong Nhat district) has more than 5 hectares of agricultural land with many different crops such as dragon fruit, cashew, banana… Around 2017, Mr. Chuc invested in planting 5 lemon pole, in the garden there are a few pomelo trees. Due to being busy with many jobs, Mr. Chuc did not have time to take care of and spray this citrus garden. During a visit to the garden, Mr. Chuc discovered that pomelo trees in the garden had many nesting weaver ants. Surprisingly, these plants were free from pests and diseases. So, he called some farmers in H.Cho Lach (Ben Tre province) to inquire. “The guys in Cho Lach say weaver ants are good for citrus. Then they showed me how to raise ants, multiply the swarm all over the garden. The way to raise is very simple, just hang chicken intestines, duck intestines on the tree and weaver ants come back at an extremely fast speed “- Mr. Mr. Dang Van Chuc (Hung Nghia hamlet, Hung Loc commune, Thong Nhat district) said: “I follow nature, do not use chemicals, but the garden always has fruit, I sell it every month. In total, I find the effect is not inferior, sometimes even better than using chemicals to take care of the tree. With the same price as last year, from the beginning of the year until Tet I sold for from 35,000 VND per kilogram of pomelo, no other garden in this area can sell for as high as my garden. The reason for the sale is because I don’t use chemicals, so people prefer grapefruit from my garden.” Like many other farmers, in the past, Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan’s family (with living in Hung Nghia hamlet, Hung Loc commune) had to spend tens of millions of dong a year to buy pesticides, spray chemical fertilizers, and fertilize a large pomelo garden. 1 ha. That is not to mention the fear of affecting health, the environment and agricultural products that are not guaranteed to be food safe. In 2018, he started tinkering with how to do clean agriculture instead of using chemical drugs that are both toxic and expensive. Mr. Tuan said: “I have researched online, I know that beneficial organisms must be used to destroy harmful ones. In particular, the weaver ant is a very suitable species to destroy harmful pests and protect citrus trees. At that time, there was a nest of weaver ants in my field, but only a few “flare” had. Later, I caught more ants outside the house and brought them to the field to raise.” When he started raising weaver ants, Mr. Tuan received many words from his relatives and neighbors. Despite all the objections, he was determined to do it. However, his perseverance and efforts paid off. The ants gradually adapted to his care and became more and more prolific. Currently, the ants have covered and effectively protected the pomelo garden. Talking about the work of raising weaver ants, Mr. Tuan said: “Weaver ants are easy to raise, and do not take much time, effort and care costs. However, if you don’t know how to take care of it, the ants will leave or die. If it has been determined to raise ants to protect crops, it is not allowed to spray pesticides anymore. Because if you do, the ants will die or leave.” This is also the challenge of farmers who want to apply the weaver ant farming model to protect citrus orchards. According to Mr. Chuc, it takes 1 year for gardeners to have enough time to “build up” ants for the garden. Meanwhile, farmers will certainly be very impatient when their crops are attacked by pests and diseases, so they will use pesticides to make the ants leave. So far, many farmers have not dared to take the risk to apply this model. * Double effect Persevering with the new direction for the past 3 years, both Mr. Chuc and Mr. Tuan have achieved initial successes. Yellow ants nest on pomelo trees. This is a natural enemy of pests that damage citrus trees such as bugs, mealybugs, worms, etc. Weaver ants can kill harmful pests on citrus orchards such as: bugs, aphids, charm worms, mealybugs, stink ants. Therefore, lemon trees and grapefruit trees with weaver ants are almost 100% free of insects. Thus, farmers do not have to use pesticides, do not spend time spraying. This brings many benefits: good for health, balancing the ecosystem, protecting the environment, reducing investment costs. In particular, by growing naturally, without using chemicals, without being harmed by pests and diseases, citrus trees protected by weaver ants will produce large, succulent fruits. “People who make pomelos are afraid of the worm drawing charms, but the yellow ants can kill them all. Mealybugs are also a favorite of weaver ants. If we keep weaver ants in the garden, the quality of the fruit is number one,” said Mr. Chuc confidently. Mr. Dang Van Chuc (left) and Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan by Mr. Chuc’s fruit-laden lemon garden According to Mr. Chuc, raising weaver ants in the garden has only one drawback. That is when harvesting will be a bit extreme because if you are not careful, you will be bitten by ants immediately. Mr. Chuc said that without using pesticides, farmers still have many other ways to handle the plants to flower and bear fruit as they like. For example: adjust the dose of irrigation water, fertilizer … depending on the experience of each person. As for the 5 sao of lemon in Mr. Chuc’s house, thanks to the application of the weaver ant farming model to protect the plants, this orchard can be harvested all year round with an income of about 7-8 million VND/month, minus the cost of only about 10%. Sharing the experience of raising weaver ants, Mr. Tuan said that the rainy season is the season when the pests, bugs, aphids in the garden thrive, the ants have food available, so farmers do not need to give more food. In the hot and dry season, when the amount of food is exhausted, the gardener must provide more “bait” for ants, usually: chicken intestines, duck intestines, dried fish. Feed once a week or a fortnight. This is enough for the colony of weaver ants to reproduce and develop normally. In addition to raising weaver ants, Mr. Tuan also uses IMO yeast to make bio-fertilizers for plants. Accordingly, he took advantage of all kinds of household waste such as garbage, leftovers, etc. to make compost, then mixed with water to irrigate crops. This approach has helped him both reduce costs, and help the pomelo garden to be green, produce a lot of fruit and ensure quality.

In courts and palaces, elaborate and splendid woven rugs play an important role in the interior decoration of large and small rooms. There was a time when wool carpets were sold very expensive, becoming a valuable product in the treasure of kings and used as tribute between nations. Until now, the hand-woven and elaborate traditionally woven rugs are still expensive decorations for luxury villas. The art of weaving wool carpets imported to Vietnam has no long history, only about a hundred years. In 1926, in the village of Hang Kenh, Hai Phong, a 13-year-old boy named Dang Huu Binh broke up with his family to make a trip. Binh traveled all the way to Tianjin province in China, where he practiced carpet weaving centuries ago, which has produced the most beautiful and famous carpets in Asia, to learn the craft of carpet weaving. After 6 years studying, he returned home and worked at the Hang Kenh carpet weaving factory – Hai Phong, one of the largest carpet weaving factories in Southeast Asia at that time. The document does not indicate that this weaving workshop belongs to Mr. Binh, his family or that of another person. The Saigon Book looks back one hundred years. Photo: Phanbook. An article (without author’s name) on the page vinacarpet.vn said “wool carpet making appeared in Hang Kenh, Hai Phong around 1930 (?) and stopped around 1944. At that time, every year Hai Phong exported to France and Hong Kong about 1,000 m2 wool carpet. The color, pattern, layout, decorative concept of Hang Kenh wool carpet was almost like Chinese wool carpet at that time. Although there was a painter (graduated from Indochina Fine Arts College) at that time gave some new wool carpet samples to the Hang Kenh wool carpet weaving establishment, in order to lessen the Chinese carpet look of Hang Kenh products, but he did not. accepted by customers because they used to use Chinese-style carpets ”. Mr. Binh is not really the first person to learn the profession of carpet weaving, but perhaps a rare Vietnamese artisan learns the craft of weaving traditional high-class wool rugs from a country with more sophisticated carpet making. After working for a while at the Hang Kenh textile company, Dang Huu Binh moved to the South to set up a career in Saigon. From 1955, Mr. Dang Huu Binh officially established Dong Hung carpet weaving company, also known as Vietnam Industry of Weaving Carpet, concurrently held the position of technical director. His workshop was set on 2,300 square feet of land, consisting of a painting office for design and a weaving workshop of thirteen hand-woven wooden frames, of which a giant 13-meter-wide frame, 8 meters tall is the largest. Products of Dong Hung carpet weaving company. The picture in the Saigon book looks back a hundred years. The drawings are all sketched by Mr. Binh, two sons and a grandson. Weavers are completely women, there are up to fifty permanent workers, including people in the family of Dang Huu Binh. The process of weaving carpets in Dong Hung carpet company was reported Free World Volume IX, number 9 describes in the article: “To weave a rug, first of all, sketch a small model with all colors and images. Then, depending on the size and proportion, magnify on a glossy paper. The weavers base on the pattern and the scale of the carpet will weave, base the frame with cotton thread “. “This cotton thread is called the vertical thread. Then the wool color is chosen to weave the weft. The tools of the carpet-weaving industry are a sharp, sharp knife, a pair of scissors and a beating table with teeth like a comb. Every time a knot of wool is tied, between two standing cotton threads, the worker uses a knife to cut off the wool and knots the next second like that for the rest of his work, for there are at least four on the loom. five workers work together. After tying all the wool knots in a turn, push down one of the cotton threads and press down hard with the table to tighten the knots. At the same time, a second cotton thread is also pushed down diagonally so that the wool knots cannot move. For every cross-street to make another road ”. The average weaver completes a square meter in 5 days. The best or medium rugs differ in the thickness of the knots. For example, the premium type has a square meter of wool with four kilograms of wool with 100,000 knots, the second three and a half kilograms with 67,000 knots, the third 3 kilograms of wool with 45,000 knots. The hand-woven textile industry in the South at that time was considered to be very sophisticated and was on the rise. In Saigon before 1975 there was an exhibition of tapestries and wall rugs for decoration, held at Thanh Le’s shop, Tu Do Street (Dong Khoi), to introduce to the public. the prosperity of the wool carpets industry and the latest art products of this small technology industry. The rugs displayed here are all produced by Dong Hung firm of Dang Huu Binh at 270 Le Van Duyet Street, and by the Thanh Le house as an agent.

This was a challenge because the requirement was to produce an unconnected whole rug, up to 27 meters long, 11 meters across, a total of about 300 square meters, which is very large. The weavers are trimming the watermarks and trimming the flowers on the giant rug located in the Independence Palace ceremony room at the Dong Hung carpet weaving factory. The picture in the Saigon book looks back a hundred years. Realizing this sheet, Mr. Binh considered the continuation of the tradition of his hometown’s Hang Kenh weaving profession, making the carpet for the most important mansion in the South. To make a large carpet, there must be a large loom, Mr. Binh himself had to design a giant loom made entirely of wood, with a trunk of a wood with a diameter of 50 centimeters. A document showing his own drawing and the Gia Dinh Fine Arts School made. To weave the carpet, Mr. Binh built his own workshop, with up to 60 artisans and craftsmen directly sitting and weaving. The carpet is located in the Independence Palace Palace room built in 1966. Photo: The TGTD newspaper episode XVI number 1. The mat is exactly the same size as above, 1.8 inch thick. The main tone of the carpet is red, the white daisies are scattered prominently on the red background and the border has blue patterns. The design is generally luxurious and modern, elegant and no frills. This giant carpet is heavy and very bulky. When bringing the carpet into the room to use a crane and many helpers. The carpet was used regularly for nine years in the Khanh Tiet room, the largest room of the palace with an area of ​​448 square meters, where it was used to hold large meetings, entertain guests with solemn ceremonies from 1966 until 1975. Fix the carpet in the Unification hall. Photo: Hans Peter Grumpe. It was not until 1991 that this large rug was repaired and thankfully, German photographer Hans Peter Grumpe came to capture this rug repair scene. Dong Hung carpet weaving company probably ended in 1975. The pictures here are published from The Gioi Tu Do, volume IX, number 9 and volume X number 5 (no publication date, about the second half. 1960s) are the remnants of a time when Saigon has developed a proud high-class wool carpet weaving industry.