Greatest Soursop cultivation/Farming information ever!: Graviola farming tutorial

Soursop is a tall tropical tree which has a funny looking oval and spine green fruits. It is grown in Africa, America and Asia and the Caribbeans with some percentage grown in Europe and middle East.

Soursop is grown in a tropical area and it does well with a soil pH of 5 to 6.5 a temperature of about 60 70 °F and on a good watered land.
It is a long tree of about 15 to 30 feet and can yield more than 70 fruits per tree in a year.

Soursop is one of the most valuable perennial plants which has good economic potential, based on what it is used to produce, but it is very sad that many farmers and agriculturists turn away their faces when it comes to soursop farming which made this fruit to be scarce.

This motivated me to write this content just to teach people how to farm/cultivate or grow this wonderful plant known as Soursop.
In this article, I am going to enlighten you on the importance, growing process and market potential of Soursop plants.

Farming Requirements of Soursop trees

Farming Requirements of Soursop trees simply means all the things needed or necessary to plant this trees as a farmer, they are :

Land: We all know that Soursop is a big tree and big plants comes with big farm lands.

What am trying to portray is, enough land should be made available before thinking of going into this type of farming business because a single soursop could occupy about 4 to 5 feet of a land, then imagine planning to have at least 50 or 100 plants, that means enough land should be budgeted.

Farm tools: Farming tools are one of the things needed to start this type of farming, they are used to clear the land, cut down trees in the farmland and even weed the plants, harvest and dig holes where the soursop plants are to be planted.
The farm tools includes, tractors, Cutlass, farm ladder, harvester and even farm spade.

Fertilizer/Manure: This is a necessary requirement of Soursop plants, for they need to be helped with manures and Fertilizers in order to grow healthy, faster and yield good fruits.

Preparation of Soursop farming

Preparation of land: Before this trees could be planted, the farmland will first of all be prepared!
Lets assume you have gotten the land for the farming, or if not, it is advisable to get a land in the rural areas where land is cheaper compared to cities, and the land should be very close to a city because of transportation to market your products, and also the land should be also free from wind and erosion, with good amount of sunlight and lesser freezing temperature.

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After you have gotten a good land with these qualities, the next thing is to prepare it for the farming.

To prepare it, cut down the trees in the farm and clear it off! do same to the bush and rake it very well, this is to provide a conducive environment for the seed germination and healthy growing of the trees.

When this is done, dig holes in the land of about 2 inches, if you are planting the seeds directly, and 6 inches if you are transplanting already germinated seeds and give 6 feet to 8 feet gap between them.

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After digging the holes, then plant the Soursop seeds, a seed per hole and cover with sand, keep watering it everyday till they germinate. If you are transplanting, which I recommend, here is how to do it:

When you have gotten the seeds, and don’t want to plant them direct to the farm, due to the fact that not all of them will germinate in the farm, so you need to germinate them by yourself, then transplant to the farm.

To do this, get flower pots and fill them up with good and rich soil, make holes of an inch with your fingers in the sand and place the seeds each in a hole in the pot and cover them slightly with sand. Water them once in a day and make sure they are exposed to sunlight on daily basis, for easy and fast germination.

It will take roughly between 25 to 30 days for the seeds to start germinating, both the ones planted directly in the farm etc, depending on the condition they are exposed to ( if exposed to good germinating condition).

Care of Soursop farm/trees

Once the Soursop plants have been sowed and have germinated or have been successful transplanted, it does not end there as they need to be taken care of till they mature and start yielding fruits.

On an average, a soursop tree could take between 3 to 4 years to mature and start bearing fruits, depending on the level of care given to them and how healthy the seeds are before they are planted, this is why it is important to order or get your treated seeds from a reputable market place. ( Check my recommended seeds market place below).
The care of Soursop tress are:

Watering: Water is the most important thing this plant needs to survive.

Right from the moment the seeds are sown in the ground, water should be applied at Least once in a day or 2 days, depending on the climate condition.

Although for me, I will highly recommend planting this trees in the rainy season, so that the rain could help you to water the plants, thereby reducing you off the stress and work involved in watering them.

To water them, it is either an irrigation is made ( if the farm is near a stream or river) or you water them manually by yourself, both of them are good.

Doing it manually requires few watering tools like watering cane, laying host/pipe.

Fertilizer/Manure: Fertilizer or manure is another great need of this type of plants which will help them for better growth and good quality yields.

Just like water, Fertilizer or organic manure should be applied right from the time of sowing the soursop seeds or even before that ( during the time of clearing the farm).

When clearing the farm, the green leaves from the weeds and trees you cut down could be left in the farm land for them to decay and turn into organic manure which will improve the soil nutrient or animal dungs could be poured all over the land and they will turn to good manure when they decay.

After sowing the seeds or transplanting, Fertilizer or organic manure should be applied to them immediately! this solely depends on the level of soil nutrient, if it is okay, the Fertilizer could wait and organic manure should be applied alone.

The Fertilization of this plant is not a regular thing, as it is done few times in a year, for instance, in the first year of it, NPK 10:10:10, half pound of this Fertilizer should be applied 2 times, in the second year, 1 pound of it should be applied 2 times and in the third year and above, 2 and half or three pounds is okay and once they start bearing fruit, stop!.

To apply, take the measurement of the Fertilizer and dump around the bottom of the trees and cover it with a little bit of sand, then leave it for the rain or water to integrate them into the soil, organic manures is done the same way too.

Weeding: Weed is a very disturbing factor of the soursop plants, so need to be take care of!.

Immediately this trees are planted, weeds tends to sprout out in a matter of weeks or a month, this will disturb or even kill the plants if they are not taken care of. They disturb the soursop plants by sucking the soil nutrients which the trees will grow with on the long run and they also outgrown the Soursop trees, thereby blocking them off from the sunlight, which they need mostly to survive.

This is why it is very important to do away with weeds always when ever they come out.
To weed a soursop farm, you need to do it either manually or with weed killer.
manual weeding requires tools like weeding hoe and rake and a farm barrow to dispose off the Weeds, this depends entirely on the size of the farm, if the farm is very large, manual weeding is not a good ideal unless there are numerous number of workers at your disposal, using herbicides is a very palatable way of weeding in larger farm land.

Pruning: It is very sad that many farmers don’t prune their plants which is a very good method of taking absolute care of their farm plants.

We all know the importance of the sun or sunlight to plants and even animals, Soursop trees are not exempted from this , so it is very important to prune the trees so that they could have enough sunlight to penetrate them and help them in every ramifications.

To prune, cut out the branches that does not look so lively so that they will stop shading the whole trees from sunlight and also do the same to some nearby trees that might seem to be a threat to the Soursop trees.

Mulching: Mulching is another great way to care for this tree. As I have explained earlier on this topic, Soursop is very slow and dull in growing, so they need good regular amount of water and manure to grow healthy, so this made Mulching a very necessary act, because during dry season when the water in the soil is drying off, mulching the soursop farm will help to sustain good amount of water in the soil and also it helps to sustain soil nutrients from heavy rain washing them away and also suppresses weed germination.

To mulch, cut out green leaves in larger numbers and use them to cover around the bottom of each of this plants and leave them there. When they dry, you can repeat the same thing till the trees grow old enough to take care of themselves.
This can be done once the trees have germinated and start growing.

It is important not to cover or shield the plants from the sunlight in the name of mulching as this could be catastrophic.

Pest and Disease control: Just like any other agricultural crop or plant suffers from pests and diseases, Soursop plant is not exempted!, this plant attracts alot of pests, more especially when it develops flowers and yield fruits.

Some of the pests you should look out for includes Root grubs, Oriental fruit fly, mealy bugs, Carpenter moth larva, Squirrel, Bat, and many types of bird.

These pests attack at different stages of the plant, for instance this tree attracts pests more when the fruits are riped, pests like birds, bat, squirrel and flies do feed from the riped fruits of Soursop.

Pests like Root grubs do attack on the earlier stage etc.

These pests shoould be looked out for, unless they destroy the plant or the fruits, to control them, use insecticide on some like caterpillars and root grubs and to control the rate they feast on the fruits, do make sure you pluck them before they ripe and start attracting all these pests.

Diseases are another problem of this plant which needs to be taken care of adequately as they are far more deadly compared to pests if not taken care of or controlled.

Some of the Diseases are: Root rot, anthracnose, Pink disease, etc. Just like the pests, they will also need to be controlled with the use of pesticides or neem oil for the treatment of these diseases.

Harvest of Soursop Farm

Once it is exactly 3 or 4 year from the time of sowing the seeds of this plant, they will attain their maturity age and will start bearing fruits which is to be harvested and sold or eaten when riped.

Before they could have or grow fruits, they will first of all grow out flowers which will metamorphose into fruits.

From the flowers, the fruits will start growing gradually till they get bigger and start maturing for ripe.

The fruits when they get bigger is always dark green in colour and very hard when touched and the spine or pine-like out layer of it is very hard at this stage, but as time goes on, they will start getting ripe, you will know this when the fruits begin to swell and becomes very soft, even it’s spines, then they need to be harvested or pests will feast on them.

To harvest you need a harvester or a farm ladder and a big bag to pluck them up there, a Soursop fruit could weigh up to 5kg, and a tree could carry more than 70 fruits at a time. Although all of them may not mature the same time, but many will, so it is advisable to take big and strong bag to harvest them.

To me, I will recommend harvesting when they have not riped and sell them because you will have about 4 or 5 days before they could ripe, this will give you a chance to still have them still good even if you don’t sell them immediately.

Note – Please avoid allowing them to fall on the ground, wether ripe or unripe as this will destroy them quicker than expected unless they will be consumed immediately.

Storage of Soursop Fruits

After harvest, the next thing will be to store them, Storage is very important in soursop farming business as all of the harvest can neither be sold immediately at once nor could they be consumed immediately and at once too, so it is very important to have a good storage system.

Some of the ways to store this fruit for future use includes:

Freezing: freezing is a very good storage method for fruits which Soursop is one of it.
To store with this method, just wash the fruits, put in containers and place into the refrigerator or cold room. With this method, both the ripe and unripe could be stored up to a month or far more without spoiling.

Leaving them on the tree: Like I explained above, if you can’t sell them very fast, do not harvest them because doing so will quicken their ripe velocity, but leaving them on their trees do make them more slow in getting ripe, so make sure they are ready to be distributed before plucking them. This is a strategic storage system also.

Uses/Importance of Soursop

If you are thoroughly following, I referred to this plant as an important agricultural plant, this is because it has many value which people don’t even know, here are some of them:

Riped Soursop fruit is used to make ice cream, beverages, Sherbets etc.

The Soursop seeds and it’s bark are very toxic and some poisonous alkaloids such as anonaine, muricine, and hydrocyanic acid are contained in them which can be used for research purposes.

This plant produces one of the finest woods for making fire and as a tall trees the woods could be used as planks for roofing.

It contains many minerals which the body needs like vitamins, calcium, protein etc.

The market of this fruit is very huge that it is always on high demand and it could make the farmer a good income, passively and continuously as the trees can last for many years.

In some places, the leaves are prepared and drank as teach which they say to be medicinal.

My recommended Seed market place

Conclusion

I hope this article have helped you, if so, endeavor to share in the social media and also subscribe to my newsletter for regular updates.

For any enquiry and business, my email is below on the contact page.

References

Enibest.com.ng

Wikipedia.com

Agric books.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/soursop/soursop-tree-care.htm