Thirty years, old farmer San Diu created the most expensive lychee fruit in Vietnam

Old farmer Tran Van Hanh (San Diu ethnic group) is the one who grows the highest quality and most expensive lychee fruit in Vietnam.

In the early days of June, the sun was burning like fire, after a few appointments, asking for directions, we found Mr. Tran Van Hanh’s house in Chao village (Giap Son, Luc Ngan, Bac Giang) – the owner of the areas high quality lychee garden, selling at the most expensive price in Vietnam. Taking us to visit the litchi garden, which is ripening red, Mrs. Truong Thi Bay – Mr. Hanh’s wife said: “The family is about to have a big feast, my grandfather has been busy these days to invite guests, he will probably come back in the afternoon”. Stopping in the middle of a litchi garden laden with branches, Ms. Bay said: “This year my lychee crop failed due to hail during Tet, but this garden alone is very fruitful. There is about a week left to harvest, the business has already consumed all the first-class lychees in the garden.” She and her husband have been growing lychees since 1991. In the early days, they ate rice with cassava and corn porridge to gain strength to use a hoe to level the land on hills to grow litchi. At that time, people only knew how to plant and take care of them according to their own experience, which lychees could be picked and sold, and did not know the planting and fertilization techniques so that the lychee would meet the same high quality standards as now. . In the early years of growing Luc Ngan litchi, the output was not much, so the price was high. Later, the area increased, the people had more experience in planting, and the yield also increased. However, a lot of goods are easy to depreciate. In the harvest season, her husband and her husband carried heavy baskets of lychee to the market to sell, but merchants competed with each other to criticize the bad, small fruit and then deliberately forced it to sell at a cheap price, only a few thousand VND per kilogram. Even when the price is so cheap, people growing lychee here also bring lychees to the market to sell by baskets, not by weight. The basket of cloth weighs more than 1 quintal but only sold 100 thousand VND, enough money to fill up with gasoline to go home, considered a waste of effort to fertilize.
Many houses at that time were tired of selling cheap lychees and cut them down, destroying the whole garden. She and her husband tried to keep it because lychee is the main source of income, destroying the garden and not knowing how to plant another tree to replace it. “Once, my grandfather saw that the canopy of a litchi tree grew quickly, many branches and leaves created a shady space for pests to thrive. He took a knife and cut off the small branches at the top of the canopy to create light for the garden. Then, in the trunk, many new buds sprout, then flower and bear fruit. More surprising is the rate of fruiting in the branches growing from the trunk is very high. The quality of the lychee obtained is also much higher than that of the litchi from the top,” she said. Desperate, risking to change your life Seeing this, her husband proposed to renovate the family’s litchi gardens, but she was afraid of failure. The couple is quite hesitant, but if they don’t change and still do the old way, how can they escape the scene of selling cheap fabrics. So they decided to take a risk. Thirty years old farmer San Diu produces the most expensive lychee in Vietnam Thirty years old farmer San Diu produces the most expensive lychee in Vietnam
In 2011, she and her husband started the process of improving the technical process of caring, “squeezing” the litchi tree to produce fruit from the stem. Looking at the lychee garden was fined almost all of the tops, still bare with branches and roots, but her guts were sore, worried that it would damage the lychee garden, she recalled. “There was no process, at that time it was called taking risks. Just doing it and gaining experience. Initially made a garden, later increased to 2 gardens. Once you have experience, you can renovate and convert all of the family’s lychee gardens,” she said. Finally, with the technique of pruning, limiting the growth of the canopy to help light shine down the trunk, the buds that grow from the trunk after harvesting the fruit must be cut off, the second buds out to take care of the flowers. , bearing fruit and fertilizing periodically, … her husband also “squeezed” the lychee tree to bear fruit from stem to top. Accordingly, for nearly ten years, every year the lychee in her house has been harvested. The lychee fruit is of much higher quality, the design is also more beautiful. Each tree produces about 40-50kg of lychee fruit from the trunk, in addition, lychee on the top can produce 70-80kg, even there are trees up to 1.8 quintals of fruit. Importantly, her family’s lychee always sells for one-and-a-half times higher than the market price. Traders come to the house to buy, she boasted. Making high-quality goods, counting money happily After visiting the garden, Mrs. Bay took us into the villa, and that was when Mr. Hanh returned. Seeing us, he smiled and asked if everyone had tasted organic lychee to see how the quality was. Then he said: “This time the litchi is ready to eat.”
Mr. Hanh said that the litchi season in 2019 was the first year he shook hands with a business to make organic lychees. The organic farming process is much stricter than the VietGAP process. Organic fertilizers and pesticides must be on the list of permitted use. The fertilization process is divided into 3 phases. Phase 1 fertilize before the plants flower or set young fruit. Phase 2 fertilizes when the fruit is with the tip of a finger and the third phase when the fruit is in the pulp, the seeds are covered, Ms. Bay added. In addition to the detailed diary, he also installed a camera in his garden to monitor the entire process from tending to fruit picking. Products are provided with labels and QR codes so that when customers need to check, they can use smartphones to verify. As a result, last year’s lychee season, he sold 3 tons of high-quality organic lychee to the business. They canned 12 fruits and sold them for 200,000 VND/box (equivalent to 17,000 VND/fruit and 600,000 VND/kg). This is also the most expensive type of lychee in Vietnam. “The first organic lychee they bought from my family cost 90,000 VND/kg for canning, and the bag type cost 60,000 VND/kg. This price is also double the price in the market, “she said. According to her, the yield of organic lychee is not as high as that of the VietGAP method, but in return, organic lychee is easy to sell. Guests in Bac Giang and in Hanoi also rode a car up to her garden to ask to buy lychee. “Last year, the fabric sold at a high price. Picking baskets of cloth to sell enough money to measure rice for half a year. The amount of fabric may not be as good as five years ago, but the money is more collected, counting happily,” said Ms. Bay. In the last Tet holiday, there was hail that affected the flowering and fruiting rate of litchi trees. However, Hanh and his wife still believe that with 2 hectares of lychee growing area, the output of this crop is estimated at 20 tons. Enterprises also put up a deposit to cover all type 1 lychees. Regarding the income from lychee, according to Mr. Hanh, it depends on the price of each crop. But with the same area of ​​cultivation as his family is doing each year, he also earns about 800-900 million VND from this specialty fruit. In recent years, in addition to taking care of the family’s litchi garden, Mr. Hanh also teaches pruning techniques as well as care techniques so that lychee fruit can come out from the trunk to farmers inside and outside the province. Many successful people, grow and obtain lychees of the same quality as lychee in his garden.