Sergey Lebedev, the head of the Kharkiv Fruit Company, is striving to save and restore at least a part of the destroyed orchard. Once one of the most powerful horticultural enterprises in Ukraine, the Kharkiv Fruit Company is now among the most devastated businesses in the region.
Unfortunately, the company cannot tackle the problems alone without help. The funds are not enough to meet all the needs, and it has been impossible to get state help or a bank loan. Despite everything, the leader continues to prepare the war-torn farm for the next season.
"Currently, we are pruning trees, hoping to complete these works on an area of 15–18 hectares, where we can expect a harvest. We have managed to repair the trellis and the irrigation system, which suffered greatly during the shelling," Sergey Lebedev told the "Horticulture and Vegetable Growing. T.I." publication.
However, come spring, the farm will urgently need plant nutrition, as even dreaming of protection systems is not an option right now.
"We need any fertilizers used in crop production: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, suitable for both root and foliar feeding. I hope we can restore the filtration station, allowing us to also apply them through the drip irrigation system," the head of the fruit company shared.
He also hopes that it will be possible to harvest the first commercial crop of apples from the surviving part of the orchard next year. Unfortunately, this year's harvest was destroyed by frost in May.
"On May 10, we had up to -7 degrees Celsius frost, and we lost the entire crop. I don't remember anything like this before. Sometimes we lost 10-15% of the crop, but never all of it. So this year we didn't sell a single kilogram of apples, although we hoped to collect 400–500 tons of harvest," says Sergey Lebedev.
However, even weather calamities have not stopped him from fighting to save the orchard; he welcomes any help and support.
This year, the media group "Technologies and Innovations" once again calls on its colleagues, friends, and partners from different parts of Ukraine and abroad to support Sergey Lebedev, to help him save and restore the work of what was once one of the largest fruit orchards in Ukraine.
Before the arrival of Russian occupiers, the Kharkiv Fruit Company was actively developing: nearly 60 hectares of intensive apple orchard, a modern storage with a controlled gas environment for 2000 tons of apples, a juice production workshop, and about a hundred employees. The farm was on the front line for almost half a year, continuous shelling not only destroyed it by 95% but also eliminated the possibility of development.
Despite all the difficulties and troubles, Sergey Lebedev has not lost faith in the possibility of saving his orchard and restoring its operation.
Source: techhorticulture.com