Thread: Kanchanaburi : Choncharoen Farm

Down on the farm
Pattarawadee Saengmanee



Head out to Kanchanaburi and harvest yourself some fruit and veg

Surrounded by mountain and cooled by winter breezes, Choncharoen Farm in Kanchanaburi is a great day to spend a day admiring some rather unusual fruit and veggies like heart-shaped tomatoes and square watermelons.

Until next Sunday, the farm is hosting the "Chia Tai Fair 2011", a showcase of agricultural innovations and seed exhibitions under the slogan "Where quality food begins".

Chonchareon is one of several integrated research stations run by the Chia Tai Group, a seed subsidiary company of the well-known Charoen Pokphand Group.

The fair has been held biannually since 1999 with the aim of sharing knowledge about agriculture with local farmers and gardeners as well as the wider public. In just a few hours, visitors can discover more than 400 breeds of plants, vegetables, fruits and flowers spread over more than 100-rai of land.

This year, the farm has proved a popular destination with families, offering many fun activities as well as a market selling quality products for the kitchen.

"The fair aims to support and share knowledge with local agriculturists and public. Vegetables are good for the health, so we want to encourage Thais to cultivate homegrown vegetables," says chief operation officer, Manus Chiaravanond. "Browse around here and you'll see how these small seeds grow into important ingredients for our daily meals."

The fair is divided into four zones: blooming flower gardens, greenhouses, vegetable plots and fruitgrowing areas. At the entrance, there's a pavilion housing an agricultural product exhibition and featuring a five-colour vegetable garden in geometric form.

Colourful and bright, the massive plot is planted with Chinese kale, cauliflower, water morning glory and cos salad in varying five shades of green interspersed with purple Chinese cabbage and eggplants and with sweet tomatoes and watermelons adding a slash of red.

Alongside is a row of giant pumpkins and melons in yellow, accompanied by white eggplants and cucumbers. The highlight is more than 250 species of flowers and plants in vivid shades and different shapes.

The innovations are here too - the heart and square-shaped watermelons, cute heart-like tomatoes, grandfather chillies that blow your socks off, gigantic pumpkins, plus marrows that resemble bolsters.

Walk past a colourful archway of beautiful flowers and a long tunnel made of bitter gourds and you come to a green home garden designed to give visitors ideas about landscaping their own backyards.

Useful and good for the health, holy basil, chilli, eggplant, Chinese kale, Chinese cabbage, water morning glory, celery cabbage, sponge gourd, lemon glass and coriander are highlighted as the best choices.

For those with limited space, the farm has a demonstration patch that shows how cos salad can flourish in banana trees and tyres and be ready for eating within 30 to 45 days.

Another popular stop is the greenhouse zone showcasing the farm's seed innovations and where visitors can check out Chia Tai's latest farming technology.

Some nurseries are home to delectable sweetheart cherry tomatoes, yellow Japanese and seedless melons with a deliciously sweet flavour and squash shaped like balloons and UFOs. Also on display is the best selling cherry -but here it's not just, well cherry in colour, but also green, yellow, red, orange and chocolate.

"We're one of the biggest seed distributors in Thailand. We have the research stations in Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, Kunming in China and Indonesia. Our best sellers include melon, pumpkin, sponge gourd, cabbage and bitter cucumber," says Wichet Pornlertpong, deputy general manger of the seed business. "We want to promote tomatoes in the local market. They are good for health. Many people think that they're a vegetable, but actually they are fruit. So we try to develop the seeds of tomatoes. Right now cherry tomatoes are popular as they have a sweet flavour.

Right next door to the fruit is the flower nursery and it's like walking into a paradise of colour. More than 200 species are on show from blue sage, celosia, sulphur cosmos, zinnia Magellan, dwarf cosmos, salvia sahara and moss verbena to begonia mint, vinca bali, celosia plumose century and dianthus ideal.

If you're weary of strolling around, take a break at the leisure zone and snap up some special edition home-grown veggie stamps at the Thailand Post corner.

Shopaholics can end their tour at the "shopping zone", buying up quality food products from CPF, fresh vegetables, fruits and seeds from Chia Tai and other attractive merchandise from local vendors.

Bring a hat and some sunscreen and you can even harvest your own cauliflower, celery cabbages, broccoli and tomatoes straight from the garden.

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Choncharoen Farm is located at 170/1, KanchanaburiSaiyok Road, Tambon Wangdong, Kanchanaburi province.

It's open daily from 8am to 5pm.

Admission is free.

For more details, call (02) 639 4000, (02) 813 5050 or visit www.Chiataigroup.com and www.Facebook.com/Chiataifair

nationmultimedia.com

Originally Posted by Mid

Chia Tai Group

I've been there. The farm is used for R&D. All sorts of good stuff grown there.

Chia Tai Group-English > Product > Seed