His name is Akira Kimura, and the apples he grows not only taste unimaginably good, but also sit in the air for two years, not rotten or bad, and are called miracle apples by everyone. To eat his apples, reservations are required after one year.
The movie "Apple of Miracles" is to recreate the process of planting pesticide-free apples in his past.
(Stills from the Akira predecessors and the Apple of Wonder movies)
But for the growers of Tsugaru in Japan, cultivating apples without pesticides? It's a joke.
Even if wild apples in the past can grow well in the natural environment, today's apple varieties are not the same as the ancestors were.
Compared with the small and sour wild apple, the modern apple variety with large size and sweet fruit is not only a human delicacy, but also a delicacy of insects and germs.
Many germs, such as spotted leaf litter and brown spot disease, can cause severe leaf defoliation of apples; the larvae of various moths will also eat apple leaves and flower buds in large quantities.
Normal apple cultivation requires the use of more than a dozen different pesticides to obtain the ideal yield.
Apples produced by such a planting method are not to say that they are not safe, and strict control of the amount of spraying and the period of spraying can produce safe apples with low pesticide residues.
But producing safe apples and safely producing apples are two concepts.
Kimura's wife is allergic to pesticides. This is the starting point for Kimura's predecessors to try to cultivate apples without pesticides.
Although in the movie, Kimura is portrayed with a silly energy. But in reality, Kimura is actually a person with a strong spirit of specialization.
Before he started cultivating apples without pesticides, he had already tried different pesticide sprays, how to affect the yield of apples.
He found that the apple was only medicated six times, and compared with the regular thirteen times, the yield was not significantly reduced; the three times the drug, although there were more diseases and insects, it was still acceptable; once the medicine, the insects were too many, but the yield was more than half of the normal orchard.
Because the cost of pesticides is saved, although the production is reduced by half, the benefits are actually OK.
Another book strengthens his path of pesticide-free cultivation. That is Mr. Masanobu Fukuoka's Natural Farming Law.
The Natural Farming Act introduces Mr. Fukuoka's experience in rice and wheat farming, as well as his ideas, arguing that man-made efforts are futile and that crops can fight against pests and diseases according to their talents.
This book greatly stimulated Kimura's enthusiasm and led him to plunge into decades of apple pesticide-free cultivation research.
But things are so simple, the first 9 years, Kimura once fell into an extremely difficult predicament, the family assets sold, destitute, even to the brink of suicide on the mountain, finally succeeded.
This bitterness is actually indescribable, you can look at the movie "Apple of Miracles" to find a feeling. But in just two hours of film, it is impossible to solve the hardships of 9 years.
The helplessness of watching the apple trees constantly sick, falling leaves, and on the verge of withering; the fear of being trapped in a sea of insects and not being able to catch them all; the kind of grievances and bitterness that are blinded by everyone and are not understood by the surrounding fruit farmers.
What's harder is that although his father-in-law, wife, and daughter have no complaints about him, they all support him. But his sense of guilt for his family is actually the biggest test.
Kimura Akira is the kind of person who does not seek fame and fortune and has no desire, but he also does not want his family to suffer.
The apple tree has been tormented by pests and diseases for 9 years, and Kimura has also been tempered by the uneasiness of the heart, the doubts of the people, and the hardships of life for nine years.
However, he is also a person with a firm heart, as the saying goes, firmly believe that the apple tree must be able to achieve pesticide-free cultivation, a road to the black, become a fool in the eyes of others.
His convictions have a solid factual basis. Because he has been successful in the pesticide-free cultivation of rice, tomatoes, various vegetables and pears and plums, only this apple is a seemingly unattainable peak.
The final turnaround occurred at the moment when he went up the mountain and committed suicide. Just when he felt that breaking was relief, he found a very healthy apple tree growing in the mountains.
In fact, it was an oak tree, and Kimura found it when he got closer. But the fruit of the tree and the healthy leaves surprised Kimura. No bugs in the mountains? No germs? Why are oak trees so healthy?
(If you smell and taste it carefully, you will know how the soil in the mountains tastes)
It was at this time that Kimura found the soil under the oak trees, overgrown with weeds, but very soft. He leaned down and sniffed, with a pungent earthy smell. Peeling open the soil, the white roots of the oak trees are densely packed; digging down a few tens of centimeters, the soil is still very soft, and the soil temperature does not change much.
And the orchard of the apple tree, the weeds are cleaned up by him every month, clean is clean, but the soil is hard, there is no special taste; and after digging out the topsoil ten centimeters, the soil temperature immediately drops.
The temperature of the soil is something that passes through the movie. The temperature of the soil indicates that there is a strong microbial activity inside.
Soft and earthy soil with a warm smell is nature's answer to Akira Kimura.
Only by creating such soil can apple trees grow a deep and healthy root system, which can obtain the nutrients deep in the soil and exert their innate ability to fight diseases and insects.
Kimura realizes that it is not he who is managing the apple tree to drive away pests and diseases; it is he who is helping the apple tree to make it healthy. Only when the apple tree works hard can it blossom and bear fruit.
In addition, weeds are not enemies of apple trees competing for nutrients. It builds understory ecosystems and loosens the soil, enriching the soil's microbial community, all of which promote soil restoration.
(Vegetables and fruits in the weeds grow vigorously)
Kimura has only paid attention to the problem of diseases and insects, but ignored the root of the apple tree, putting the cart before the horse, no wonder that he has worked hard for so long, but has not been effective.
Of course, this is not to say that apple trees can grow healthily by keeping the weeds overgrown, and comprehensive management and means are needed.
Kimura adopts the method of spreading soybeans to promote the formation of nitrogen in the soil, and excavates soil at different depths for a long time to monitor the amount of microbial activity in the soil through changes in soil temperature.
At the same time, I learned to comprehensively analyze the weather conditions, judge the outbreak period of the disease, and spray vinegar in advance before the disease comes.
He also observes insects and egg blocks in the garden for a long time, and can quickly determine where pests may lay eggs to eliminate pests in advance; at the same time, he also uses fermented apple liquid to attract moths and reduce the amount of insects.
He observed that the dense weeds of autumn raised the ground temperature, which was not conducive to the discoloration of apples, so he cut the grass once a year in autumn.
He trimmed the apple trees by imitating the lines of the veins of the apple leaves, and obtained larger fruits.
......
In short, he learned to really observe nature, to look at nature as a whole, to use comprehensive means to work, and finally succeeded.
Natural farming is not to let the farmland be abandoned; but to use ingenious artificial means on top of the natural law, which not only gives other creatures the space to survive, but also obtains their own needs.
In fact, long before Kimura succeeded in cultivating apples, his encounter in the cornfield reminded Kimura to give other creatures room to survive.
Every year, when the corn is nearing ripening, it is always stolen by foxes; Kimura is very angry and lays a lot of traps around the cornfield.
One day, a small fox was caught; its mother, who was standing by, did not run far when she saw the people coming.
Kimura's heart softened and he let go of the little fox. The little fox did not run away at once, but licked his wounds there, looking pitiful. Kimura suddenly felt very overwhelmed.
He realized that in fact, this cornfield had been the home of foxes before; was it not that humans had taken everything for themselves, and only then would animals steal and destroy?
So every year when the corn is ripe in autumn, Kimura will put the toothless corn cobs that are not sold on the side of the field. Since then, foxes have not been found to harm corn.
Privately, Kimura's kindness of knowing how to leave room for other beings is the core reason for his ultimate success. From this kindness, Kimura will be well aware of the harm of pesticides and create a Noah's Ark-style apple orchard.
All the weeds, pests, and animals that had been driven away by the other orchards found a place in Kimura's apple fields.
So Kimura's apple orchard has become a complex ecosystem, with thousands of species such as weeds, pests, beneficial insects, frogs, hares, snakes, hedgehogs, birds, soil microorganisms and microorganisms between leaves.
Kimura, on the other hand, prunes, sprays vinegar, pests, and grows soybeans, blending into this natural system, truly turning himself into a part of nature and becoming part of the ecosystem of apple orchards.
And his family's apple tree, under this natural cultivation, the roots of the tree were actually rooted to more than twenty meters deep, and other people's homes were only a few meters; when the wind blew, other people's apples lost more than 80%, and his loss was less than 20%.
The apple of miracles, that's how it came about.