Detailed Guide: 5 Steps to Restore Soil After Harvesting Durian in Off-Season

Rehabilitating soil after harvesting off-season durian is an extremely important step that helps ensure the yield and quality for the next crop. Let’s explore the 5 steps to rehabilitate the soil together with Baconco!

Detailed 5 Steps to Rehabilitate Durian Garden Soil in Off-Season

Step 1: Pruning

After harvesting, durian trees need time to rest before continuing to absorb nutrients. Therefore, fertilizing immediately after harvest can lead to toxicity or waste of fertilizer. Thus, about 7-10 days after harvesting is the ideal time to focus on pruning, cleaning the garden, and improving soil conditions before starting the fertilization program.

Pruning branches is an extremely necessary step after harvesting. Source: Internet

Pruning not only removes old and diseased branches but also shapes the tree and stimulates the growth of new shoots, concentrating nutrients on healthy shoots, helping the tree recover quickly and prepare for the next crop.

Proper pruning also helps keep the tree canopy open, ensuring even light distribution, improving photosynthesis efficiency, while reducing humidity in the canopy, limiting the growth of pathogens, and creating favorable conditions for pollination and fruit set later on. This is an important step to optimize yield and fruit quality for the upcoming season.

When pruning, farmers need to follow these principles:

• Remove branches that are infested or show signs of disease.
• Remove dry, weak branches that are unlikely to produce good fruit.
• Remove branches that are growing too densely or within the tree canopy.
• Cut off branches that are growing too low, about 0.5-1 m above the ground, to prevent the development of fungi that cause trunk cracking and gumming.
• Remove branches with leftover fruit stems or branches that are crossing each other.

Step 2: Cleaning the Garden

After harvesting the fruit and pruning, the trees often have many wounds. To protect the trees from fungi and bacteria, farmers need to use plant protection products such as Mancozeb, Zinc, Copper, etc., to safeguard the trees from diseases in the garden and prevent disease from entering through the cuts.

Step 3: Soil Improvement and Root Development Stimulation

After pruning and cleaning the garden, the next step is to restore the health of the soil and stimulate root development.

This phase focuses on providing nutrients and improving soil conditions so that the durian trees can quickly recover and prepare for the growth of new shoots.

Applying organic fertilizer: Use nutrient-rich organic fertilizers such as ANIMA, ORGANICONCO, etc., which significantly improve the physical and chemical properties of the soil, increase aeration, and enhance water and nutrient retention.

More importantly, organic fertilizers provide a rich food source for beneficial microorganisms in the soil, promoting the decomposition of organic matter and creating a favorable environment for root growth.

Products that help improve soil effectively from Baconco

Supplementing with specialized fertilizers: To optimize root recovery, farmers should combine organic fertilizers with specialized fertilizers such as NPK Con Co BASEO 6-12.

This product not only provides essential macronutrients (N, P) and secondary nutrients (Mg) necessary for root development but also contains three beneficial microbial strains (Bacillus megaterium, Streptomyces beta-vulgaris, Burkholderia sp.) that help decompose organic matter, create resistance-inducing substances, and fix nitrogen, protecting roots from fungal diseases.

Combining chemical fertilizers: After the soil has been improved and the roots begin to develop, adding chemical fertilizers through the roots and leaves will help the plants recover more quickly and robustly.

NPK Con Co BASEO 20-10-10 and Conco Calcium Nitrate are suitable choices, providing balanced nutrients (N, P, K, Ca) and helping to raise soil pH, creating a favorable environment for nutrient absorption.

Step 4: Effective Water Management

When watering, farmers need to follow these principles:

• Water every 2-3 days.
• Maintain a stable water level at a depth of 60-80 cm.
• Avoid watering with salt-containing water for the plants.

Some notes:

• Ensure adequate watering to dissolve the fertilizer well and help the roots absorb nutrients effectively.
• Supplement with Trichoderma combined with organic fertilizer to prevent the growth of harmful fungi such as Phytophthora spp., Fusarium sp., etc.
• If the plant is heavily infected with Phytophthora fungus, it needs to be treated separately before proceeding with the nutritional recovery process to prevent the spread to the entire garden.
• In cases where the plant is oozing sap or has root rot, prioritize treating the fungal disease first (within 10-15 days). Only after that should the nutritional recovery process be applied to limit the spread throughout the garden.

Step 5: Nourishing Shoots to Prepare for Flowering 

In durian trees, the main reserves are accumulated in the leaves. If the new shoots are weak and lack leaves, the tree will not be able to produce enough energy to nourish the fruit, leading to poor yield. Therefore, preparing enough leaves (usually 2-3 new shoots) before the tree flowers is very important.

Nourishing the first two new shoots

To promote the uniform and healthy growth of the first two new shoots, farmers should spray supplementary foliar fertilizers such as Supertan Xanh (28-10-10), Cofoli N, etc.

The harmonious combination of base fertilizers and foliar fertilizers will help the durian tree develop comprehensively, laying the foundation for high yields in the next season. Farmers should apply fertilizer regularly every 20 days to ensure continuous nutrient supply for the tree.

After the durian tree has produced the first two new shoots, caring for and nourishing the subsequent new shoots is very important to prepare for the flowering bud formation stage.

Transitioning to the flowering bud formation mode (from the third new shoot)

When the tree reaches the third new shoot, it is necessary to switch to a fertilization regime with a higher ratio of Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) to support the flowering bud formation process. Phosphorus and Potassium play important roles in the reproductive metabolism of the durian tree.

The perfect combination of Sulfur (S) and Calcium (Ca) helps enhance resistance to fungal diseases, while Boron (B) aids in cell differentiation, promoting better flowering bud formation.

Baconco fertilizer recommends use to increase the effectiveness of the budding season

Fertilizer selection: Suitable fertilizer formulas for this stage include: NPK Con Co 15-15-15+9S+0.05B or a combination of DAP Conco and NPK Conco 7-7-14 +12S +7Ca +0.045 B in a 1:1 ratio.

Foliar fertilizer to support bud formation

When the new leaves open, apply foliar fertilizers with high Phosphorus and Potassium content such as Cofoli PK500 and Cofoli K300. These fertilizers help the leaves develop evenly and sturdily, accumulating enough nutrients for flower bud formation, thereby increasing the success rate of off-season flowering treatments.

Proper soil improvement is a key step for durian cultivation to achieve high yield and quality. We hope that the insights from Baconco will help farmers successfully apply these practices in reality, leading to high economic efficiency and contributing to the sustainable development of the Vietnamese durian industry.