Pumpkin fields, tomato fields, corn fields, potato fields, peanut fields…
The next day, when Zhang Shou finally had enough time, he sent Zhu Ying to take Zhu Hong and Zhu Yi to the Wanghai Temple on Maliu Mountain for a "sightseeing" - in fact, of course, they were going to check out the place - and he took Ah Liu to have a good look at the large-scale vegetable garden of Lao Xianyu. He couldn't help but marvel that this was actually a genuine secret plantation that encompassed a variety of American crops!
However, when he walked past the vegetable fields planted with the familiar fruits and vegetables and saw the half-acre of lifeless cotton field, he discovered that there was a small seedling about a foot tall that looked out of place in the vegetable garden and looked wilted as if it was about to die at any time. He couldn't help but take a few more glances at it, but the more he looked, the more he couldn't help feeling.
The cotton field was not planted well, which Lao Xianyu had already admitted. And this seedling could be planted anywhere else, but here... What kind of seedling is it? It can't be what he imagined, right? Impossible, remember that it can only be planted in the south and Southeast Asia, how can it survive in Cangzhou? The winter in the north alone can freeze this seedling to death, right
Could it be that it was planted this spring? Thinking of this, Zhang Shou took a deep breath and pointed at the lonely seedling and said, "Could this also be something you and the barbarians brought back from overseas?"
Old Salty Fish didn't expect Zhang Shou to see the sapling at first sight. He immediately looked bitter and said, "Don't mention it, Dr. Zhang. Together with the batches others brought back from overseas, there must be at least a box of tens of thousands of seeds in total, but only this one was planted!"
"It was the dying elder who was almost revered as a prophet who told me that the rubber tree is like a cow producing milk. If you cut it with a knife, milky white juice will flow out. The juice is sticky, like glue, and can be made into black elastic balls. It seems that it can also be used for some other important purposes, but he didn't have time to tell me. As a result, several batches of my seeds turned out like this... I was so angry!"
"Most of them didn't sprout at all after the spring, and some of them sprouted but died soon after... I asked Zang Hai to water them desperately... Well, come to think of it, the local rain is abundant and the weather is hot, not less than Cangzhou. If there wasn't plenty of water near Zang Hai's lower courtyard, and those Hai Dongyi people were also watering them desperately, maybe not even a single tree would survive."
Zhang Shou could understand Lao Xianyu's frustration. No matter who it was, if they had brought something back from overseas with great effort, and then spent a lot of effort to plant it, only to see that it didn't survive, they would be discouraged no matter what. The problem was that, just like cotton, their efforts were really put in the wrong place...
Thinking about what Ah Liu overheard last night, he thought that since the so-called prophet Mu Lao had a very high status among the local Yi people, it was unreasonable that he didn't even understand such a simple transplanting principle. It was very likely that he only had time to tell Lao Xianyu and Zang Hai about the value of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cotton, rubber, etc., but didn't have time to talk about transplanting breeding.
Zhang Shou glanced at Lao Xianyu with a strange look on his face. "Before you brought these seeds back from Haidong, did you have any farming experience? I mean, have you ever grown grain or vegetables?"