How to grow oil palm

Buy proper tenera seed or sprouts from a trusted source — a research station or a licensed nursery. Tenera is a special cross (dura x pisifera) that gives a thin shell and lots of oil. Never use seed picked up under your own or a neighbour's palms — those seedlings will not come true, and many bear thick-shelled, near-oilless fruit.

Pre-nursery (first ~3 months): sow each sprouted seed in a small bag of good topsoil, keep it in light shade, and water daily. Keep the bags close together where you can watch and water them easily.

Main nursery (next ~9 months): move each seedling into a large bag (about two hand-spans across) filled with good topsoil, spaced so the leaves just touch. Water well — a nursery seedling drinks a lot — and keep the bags weed-free.

Give a little compound fertiliser as your recommendation directs, and watch for Cercospora leaf spot the whole time (see the spraying task).

Throw out the rejects. Over the year, pull and discard any seedling that is a runt, spindly, flat-topped, grassy, twisted, or much smaller than its mates — expect to throw out a good number. A bad seedling never becomes a good palm; culling now is the cheapest yield you will ever gain.

Plant out only vigorous, dark-green, ~12-month seedlings with several healthy fronds. A few weeks before planting, harden them off — cut back the shade and water a little less — so they toughen up for the open field.

Do this in the last month or two before you plant out (near the end of the nursery year), so the land is clean and ready the moment the rains come.

Clear the bush, then dig out and remove old palm stumps and big roots — don't just cut them off at ground level. Ganoderma feeds on the dead wood you leave behind.

Gather and burn or haul away the stumps, root chunks and any old rotting palm trunks. Don't leave heaps of rotting wood on the field — they also breed rhinoceros beetle.

Line out the planting points at 9 m triangular spacing — about nine long strides between palms, each row set into the gap of the next — which fits about 143 palms per hectare.

On slopes, mark the rows across the slope and cut small planting platforms or terraces, so soil and rain stay put around each young palm.

From about 2 months after sowing, check the seedling leaves each week. Look for small brown or greyish spots, often each ringed by a yellow halo; as they spread, the leaf dries into brown patches.

Prune off and burn the worst-spotted leaves — don't drop them among the bags, where the spores wash onto healthy plants.

Spray a recommended fungicide over the leaves, wetting both sides, and repeat every 2-3 weeks while the disease is active.

Give the seedlings room and air: don't crowd the bags, and water at the base in the morning so leaves dry fast — wet, crowded leaves are what the fungus loves.

Safety: cover your skin, nose and eyes, spray in the cool of the morning or evening with the wind at your back, keep it off any food, and wash well afterwards.

Plant at the start of the rains, into land already cleared of old stumps and roots, so the young palms get a long wet spell to settle in.

Set each ~12-month seedling at 9 m triangular spacing — about nine long strides between palms, every row into the gap of the next — giving about 143 palms per hectare. Dig a hole a bit bigger than the bag.

Slit and remove the bag without breaking the soil ball. Set the seedling so the soil sits at the same level it was in the bag — never deeper, or the buried growing point (spear) rots — and firm the soil around it.

Sow the legume cover crop (Pueraria, Mucuna or Calopogonium — beans-family creepers) in the strips between the palms. Their roots pull nitrogen from the air and feed the soil; their leaves smother weeds and shade the ground.

Manure each palm at planting (see the manure task), keeping the manure in a ring a hand-span (~20 cm) out from the stem, not against it.

Keep the cover crop off the palm itself — hoe a clean weeded circle about a stride (~1 m) wide around each stem so the creepers don't climb up and smother it.

Walk the young palms every 3-5 weeks through the first year, checking the centre spear and the newest fronds of each palm.

Rhinoceros beetle — look for neat V-shaped cuts across the opening fronds and a round bored hole down into the spear. A bored spear can kill a young palm, so act at the first sign — hook the beetle out of the hole with a stiff wire.

Destroy the beetle's breeding sites: rotting logs, old stumps, and heaps of empty bunches or rotting palm waste. Spread them out to dry, or treat them.

Run pheromone traps — about 1 per 2 hectares — to catch the adults, and change the lure about every 6 weeks.

Rats — look for gnawed stem bases, teeth-marks, droppings, and eaten loose fruit. Keep the weeded circle around each palm clean, cut back rank cover, and trap or bait where rats are active.

Treat known beetle breeding heaps with a biological control — the Oryctes virus or the fungus Metarhizium — rather than blanket-spraying the field.

Start about a month after planting, then repeat every 3-4 months through the establishment years.

Use well-rotted manure or compost (dark, crumbly, no strong smell) plus the compound fertiliser your recommendation names — your recommendation gives the amount for the palm's age.

Spot-place it in a shallow ring on the weeded circle, about a hand-span (~20 cm) out from the stem — and widen the ring each time as the palm grows and its roots reach further. Keep it off the stem, which it can rot.

Lightly work it into the topsoil, or cover it with a little soil or frond mulch, so it doesn't wash away or gas off.

Safety: keep fertiliser off the young leaves and spear, away from food, water and children, and wash your hands after.

Walk the stand every 3-5 weeks, looking over the fronds and the whole crown of each palm.

Fusarium wilt — look for one side of the crown going yellow, then brown, and dying while the other side stays green; older fronds snapping and hanging down in a "skirt". There is no cure — mark badly-hit palms and remove and burn them, and never replant with tenera that isn't wilt-tolerant.

Bagworms — look for small hanging "bags" (cases made of bitten-off leaf bits) dangling under the fronds, and leaflets eaten down to a lacy skeleton.

Leaf miner — look for brown, blister-like blotches inside the leaflets and leaflets drying brown from the tip; in a bad outbreak whole fronds go brown.

Nettle caterpillars — look for flat, green, spiny caterpillars on the underside of the leaflets (they sting — don't touch bare-handed) and eaten leaf edges.

Hand-pick or spot-treat small outbreaks of the caterpillars and bags; only if damage is spreading fast across many palms bring in a recommended treatment. If a palm shows one-sided wilt, remove it — don't waste spray on it, wilt can't be sprayed away.

Prune lightly every 3-4 months as the canopy builds — a little and often, never a hard strip.

Cut off only the dead, broken or hanging lower fronds, and any that block your view of, or reach to, the forming bunches — leaving a clear "window" to the bunches. Keep every green, upright frond — those feed the palm.

Cut close to the trunk with a sharp chisel or knife, and cut cleanly — ragged wounds let in red palm weevil and rot.

Stack the cut fronds in the strips between the rows (the "frond pile"). As they rot they return potassium and organic matter to the soil — free feeding.

Never leave heaps of cut fronds and trash around the palm base, where rats and rhinoceros beetle shelter.

Feed every 3-4 months. Your recommendation gives the amount of each fertiliser for the palm's age and your soil.

Potassium (K) is the big one — usually muriate of potash. Look for its shortage as "orange spotting": older, lower fronds covered in small orange-yellow spots that run together.

Magnesium (Mg) — usually kieserite. Look for its shortage as "orange frond": older fronds turning bright orange-yellow, worst on the side facing the sun (a frond shaded by another often stays green — a handy clue).

Boron (B) — a little borate goes a long way. Look for its shortage in the youngest leaves: crinkled, hooked, stunted or "fish-bone" fronds that never open properly.

Spot-place the fertiliser in a ring on the weeded circle, out where the feeding roots are (widen the ring as the palm grows), or drop it onto the frond pile. Keep it off the stem and spear.

Safety: keep fertiliser off wet leaves and the spear, away from food, water and children, and wash your hands after. With boron especially — a pinch is medicine, too much is poison, so never exceed the recommended rate.

Check around flowering — from a few days before the female flowers open through about two weeks after — every 1-2 weeks.

Find an open male flower (a long, spiky, strong-smelling spike shedding yellow pollen) and tap it over your hand or a cloth. Look for small brown weevils crawling and flying out — plenty of them means good pollination.

Check a female bunch a few weeks after its flowers opened: a well-pollinated bunch is full and plump all the way round; a poorly-pollinated one has many small, hard, seedless fruit and gaps.

Keep male flowers on the palms and around the block — they are the weevils' breeding ground. Don't cut them all off, and don't blanket-spray insecticide over flowering palms, or you kill the pollinators.

If fruit set is poor and few weevils are about, leave more male flowers standing, stop any spraying near the flowers, and — only as a last resort in a young or isolated stand — hand-pollinate by dusting collected pollen onto the open female flowers.

From flowering, check the young bunches every 3-5 weeks.

Look for white or greyish fungal threads spreading over the bunch, brown rotting fruit, and small aborted bunches going mouldy in the crown.

Cut out and remove rotting and aborted bunches — carry them out of the field or bury them; don't leave them in the crown, where the fungus jumps to the next bunch.

Open the canopy a little by pruning dead fronds so air moves and the bunches dry — the rot loves still, damp air.

Fix the root cause: poor pollination leaves gappy bunches that rot easily, so keep the weevils working (see the weevil check).

Walk the stand every 3-5 weeks, looking hard at the base of the trunk and the whole crown of each palm.

Ganoderma — look for a hard, brown-and-white bracket (a shelf- or plate-shaped fungus) growing from the trunk base, many fronds yellowing and collapsing into a skirt at once, and unopened spears stacking up in the crown. Tap the base — a hollow, punky sound is a bad sign.

Red palm weevil — look for a wilting, lopsided or toppling crown, tunnels near the frond bases oozing brown liquid that smells sour and fermented, chewed frond bases, and sometimes a crunching sound from grubs inside.

Remove infected palms. Cut down and destroy a Ganoderma-hit palm and dig out its stump and roots (the rot lives on in them) — never leave them to infect neighbours. Burn or bury the debris.

For red palm weevil, cut out and destroy badly-tunnelled palms, and keep pruning wounds small and clean — the weevil enters through fresh cuts, so avoid heavy pruning where it is about.

Leave the gap, or replant only after clearing all the old roots — never drop a fresh seedling straight onto a rotted-out stump.

Keep feeding every 3-4 months right through bearing — bunch fill never stops, so neither does the demand. Your recommendation gives the amount.

Potassium stays the headline — a bearing palm sends a lot of K away in every bunch it delivers to the mill. Look for shortage as "orange spotting" on the older fronds.

Keep up magnesium (watch for orange, sun-side older fronds) and boron (watch for hooked, crinkled young fronds) — your recommendation carries these.

Spot-place the fertiliser in a ring where the feeding roots are, or scatter it onto the frond pile in the row middles, which also rots down to return potassium. Keep it off the stem.

Return every empty bunch and pruned frond to the interrow, not off the farm — they carry potassium back to the soil and cut what you must buy.

Safety: keep fertiliser off wet leaves, away from food, water and children, and wash your hands after.

Go round every 1-2 weeks, from about 5-6 months after the flowers opened, checking which bunches have ripened.

Ripe test: a bunch is ready when its fruit has turned from dark/black to orange-red AND a few loose fruits have detached and fallen to the ground on their own. Loose fruit lying under a bunch is your signal.

Cut ripe bunches only. On short, young palms use a chisel (a sharp blade on a short handle) pushed against the bunch stalk; on tall palms use a curved knife on a long pole (a pole-and-knife) to reach up and cut the stalk.

Cut the bunch stalk short, and take care not to gash the trunk or the frond bases — open wounds let in red palm weevil and rot.

Pick up every loose fruit from the ground and add it to the bunch — it is the ripest and oiliest, and left behind it is lost and breeds pests.

Stack cut bunches and loose fruit in the shade at the collection point, ready to go to the mill the same day (see the mill task).

If a bunch is still dark with no loose fruit yet, leave it and check again next round. If one is over-ripe (much fruit already fallen, some soft), cut it anyway so it doesn't rot on the palm and breed pests — but keep it separate, as stale fruit makes poorer oil.

Deliver every harvested bunch and all the loose fruit to the mill within 24-48 hours of cutting — the sooner the better, same-day best.

Handle the fruit gently — every bruise and cut speeds the oil going sour. Don't throw, drop or trample the bunches.

Keep the cut bunches in the shade at the collection point, not baking in the sun, while they wait for transport.

Move a full batch at once rather than letting bunches sit for days waiting to fill a load — a waiting bunch is losing value every hour.

At the mill the bunches are steam-sterilised (which stops the souring and loosens the fruit), then the fruit is stripped from the stalk, mashed, and pressed for crude palm oil; the nuts are cracked and pressed separately for palm-kernel oil.