Quote from: vipinrl on February 13, 2015, 04:55:01 AM

In Kerala, we use Coconut leaves for shading young plants.
An additional benefit of using Coconut leaves is that this method helps in simplified hardening of younger plants as the leaves gradually degrade.

These are very good methods when you don't have access to wire and shade cloth and you have a lot of willing hands to help you. But when you are farming or gardening by yourself it's very difficult to maintain. A wire cage in our climate will last very many years, and can be reused for other plants as necessary. The coconut fronds break down very rapidly in our rainy hot climate and need to be maintained and replaced often.

Grafting to other species : Experiments have been carried out at the Burliar
Fruit Station to graft D. zibethinus scions onto Cullenia excelsa rootstocks
(Anon. 1953b). Grafting onto Cullenia excelsa rootstocks in India has been
reported by Sundararaj et al. (1970). Tidbury (1976) tabulated results of grafting
experiments onto rootstocks of this species at the Burliar Research Station.
These results showed that approach grafts to C. excelsa rootstocks averaged
much greater growth than did grafts to D. zibethinus rootstocks. Grafting to
C. excelsa also contributed to earlier flowering. Unfortunately, no record of
actual success rates of grafts to C. excelsa rootstocks were uncovered in the
available literature.