The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 549 Heavy Task

Beiting Protectorate.

In the dozens of sugar beet plantations that have been divided up.

After the sugar beets sprouted, guardhouses were built in the plantation.

Each garrison also organized thousands of reserve boys to serve as beet patrol teams.

Even the Protector-General of Beiting, with his big beard, would personally go to the fields every few days to check on the growth of the sugar beets.

His meticulous manner showed even more patience than he would with his own two-month-old baby.

Seeing how much their Protector-General valued this, the confidant couldn't help but mutter to himself:
"Protector, it's just planting crops, is it really necessary to be so strict with guarding? It's still a long way from ripening."

Taking advantage of his good mood, the bearded man explained to his trusted aides:

"The Duke of Zhenxi sought out more than a dozen foreigners to learn about the characteristics of these beets."

After the seedlings emerge, they need to be thinned out after about half a month.

The sprouts are so tender, they taste better than many wild vegetables!

Once the leaves and stems have grown, they can be eaten as vegetables, and eating them can help with constipation.

She also said that as long as we apply enough base fertilizer before planting sugar beets, the rhizomes can grow to the size of a fist.

Steamed, boiled, or baked, they all taste sweet.

If we could grow sugar beets with a high sugar content, just three or five stems could yield a pound of icing sugar!

Several trusted confidants were dumbfounded:
"Heavens above, at the current planting spacing, we can get about 5,000 seedlings per acre. Calculate the sugar yield per acre, and it'll be over a thousand catties!"

"Good heavens! The sugar imported from the Southern Yue Kingdom costs two to three qian of silver per jin! How much will our icing sugar, which is whiter and sweeter than sugar, sell for then?"

"This is incredible! Are we planting vegetables on these 10,000 acres of land? It's clearly planting gold nuggets!"

"Protector, I think the patrol team is still too small! The more we go on the Wanmu Land, the more we need to be careful at night!"

The bearded man, beaming with pride, waved his hand and said, "Granted."

Having more people patrolling is a good thing!
He has more big plans in store.
What could be more fulfilling than witnessing firsthand how a seed sprouts, grows strong, matures, is harvested, and finally becomes a beautiful white icing in a sugar mill?
He needed to find some foreign painters to draw the entire growth process of sugar beets and send it to his master in Shangdu.

Ok.

He had seen the portrait of the priest hanging in the church in Bagua City.

It was so lifelike, just like the priest himself.

The bearded man was a rough fellow, and he couldn't appreciate the paintings of plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, and chrysanthemums by the Confucian scholars of Shangdu.

I prefer this realistic oil painting style.

Thinking of this, the bearded man sighed again:
It was still the Zhenxi Kingdom's guild that hired people, and none of the foreign craftsmen they bought were useless.

He was a confidant of Emperor Qianwu.

He was among the first to know that Jiangnan Shipyard had produced the latest warship design blueprints.

He believed that within two years, the Jiangnan navy would be able to build the large warships best suited to them.
Not to mention the bearded man's busy work with beets at the Beiting Protectorate.

Even for Gan Minglan herself, this year's planting tasks are not light.

This autumn, we will provide potato seeds for 500,000 mu of land within the Great Wall, so the potato planting area will be quite large.

Someone needs to follow up.

Her focus is on trial planting of various vegetables such as corn, tomatoes, peppers, and cabbage.

Although she has used her supernatural abilities to optimize the seeds of these vegetables for more than a dozen generations.

However, detailed records need to be kept of the seedling cultivation, transplanting, growth process, fertilization, and susceptibility to diseases and pests in the Kansai region, and it would be best to provide solutions for each of these issues.

Why are corn yields so low in Europe right now?
First, the seeds they used were close to the original American varieties.

No experts have yet developed cold-resistant and early-maturing corn seeds specifically for the European climate.

If the seeds are substandard, the yield will naturally be low. Secondly, corn is a high-yield but also highly soil-intensive crop.

If a farm lacks efficient fertilizers, long-term cultivation will lead to soil depletion.

In addition, Europeans still mainly ate wheat, rye, and barley, and corn was considered "food for the poor" or livestock feed.

Limited market demand dampens farmers' enthusiasm for planting.

The key is.

Since corn was introduced to Europe, it has been attacked by local pests and diseases (such as the corn borer), and the disease resistance characteristics native to the Americas have lost their effectiveness in the European environment.

Pests and diseases are the main culprits behind reduced corn yields.

Later, potatoes spread widely in Europe.

Its advantages of being cold-resistant, high-yielding, and adaptable to barren land have squeezed the planting space for corn.

However, from the perspective of Gan Minglan, a person from later generations.

The uses of corn are incredibly numerous!
As food.

After being dried, it can be stored for two or three years in a well-ventilated and dry granary without any problems, making it more resistant to storage than potatoes, which are prone to sprouting.

You can eat fresh corn on the cob and stir-fried corn kernels with chili peppers even when the corn is not fully ripe.

Mature corn is dried in the sun.

Cornmeal is grain.

Whole grains are still grains!
It can be eaten by humans and used to feed poultry and livestock.

As long as industrial technology keeps up, corn can also be pressed for oil and made into corn syrup.

Even the seemingly most useless corn stalks can be used as livestock feed when they are green, and as firewood when they are dry.

Corn is a treasure from top to bottom.

With most people in the country able to feed themselves, each household cultivates a few acres of land in front of or behind their houses.

Chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs—we can't possibly eat them all in a year!
About tomatoes.

It's bad luck that this news got out of reach the Kansai region.

Because Kansai not only has a lot of sandstorms, but also a lot of fruit trees!

In the annual afforestation plan for sand control belts, fruit trees account for the majority of the trees planted.

Among them, apple trees are the most important.

The apples here are not very big, with slightly thick skin. After peeling, the flesh is sweet and crisp, with a very rich flavor.

If you harvest trees in autumn, you can store them in a cellar for up to half a year.

Its long shelf life has made it the top choice for fruit vendors when they come to Kansai to buy fruit.

Not only are apples sweet in Kansai, but almost all fruits taste good.

Compared to other fruits, tomatoes probably have no chance of standing out.

But, isn't she still here?
Gan Minglan plans to sell the optimized tomato seeds at a high price to people inside the pass.

Like grapes, tomatoes can grow in clusters, making them suitable for both ornamental purposes and as fresh fruit.

Its bright red color when ripe is something that every lady and young lady in the inner quarters of a household would covet.
Especially those you planted yourself!

The more I thought about it, the more feasible the idea seemed.

However, when it comes to the vegetable seeds brought back by Hu Tou and his group, Gan Minglan believes that the one with the highest economic value is chili peppers.

Seasonings were originally used for medicinal purposes.

Can the price be reduced?
Chili peppers are spicier than dogwood and black pepper.

Anyway, the plantations in Kansai are guaranteed to make a profit on the first batch of silver!