Chapter 240 - 134: Gift
Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the leaves, scattering flecks of gold like a flowing painting of light and shadow.
Before they knew it, Jiang Miao and his party had arrived at their destination.
Red Grass Town, Xihai Village.
At the foot of the mountain west of Xihai Village was a vast expanse of smart greenhouses. The roofs of these 1,000-mu greenhouses were covered with nearly 800 mu of solar panels, and a large power storage room had been built to one side.
Seeing him arrive, Zhang Chengdong, who was currently overseeing the tissue culture and seedling cultivation work, immediately came up to greet him. "Boss! Morning!"
"Cheng Dong, how are things here?"
"The conditions inside the smart greenhouses meet the requirements. All the missing auxiliary equipment arrived a week ago."
They talked as they walked.
They entered a changing room, put on protective suits and helmets, and then passed through a disinfection chamber.
To meet sterilization requirements, the smart greenhouses weren’t built as a single complex. Instead, they were divided into ten 100-mu zones.
They were currently in Zone One, where new varieties of oil-tea camellia were being cultivated via tissue culture.
After observing for a moment, Jiang Miao asked, "Cheng Dong, how many oil-tea camellia seedlings ready for grafting have you cultivated so far?"
"We started cultivating seedlings at the Nanhu Laboratory last September. The first batch was used as mother stock. Official, large-scale production began with the second batch in late October. We cultivated a total of 10,000 seedlings in that batch. They’ve been growing for two months now and were transplanted to the Magong Mountain experimental cultivation base two weeks ago."
Then, Zhang Chengdong pointed to the rows of glass petri dishes before them. "This is the third batch of oil-tea camellia seedlings. We cultivated a total of one million of them starting in mid-December of last year. It’s only been two weeks since then."
Jiang Miao could tell at a glance that these seedlings had only been growing for two weeks.
"At the end of the month, all these seedlings will be transplanted to Jianshan Farm, which is behind the Xihai Village smart greenhouse facility."
"Will these seedlings be ready by March?"
Zhang Chengdong nodded. "Yes. Our new varieties are all fast-growing. With the nutrient solution and ample light from lab cultivation, they can grow to be 60 to 70 centimeters tall about two months after being transplanted out of the lab."
"That’s good."
Starting in March, the oil-tea camellia seedlings would be sent in batches to the Gannan Branch.
After grafting, the two hundred thousand mu of oil-tea camellias wouldn’t be able to bear fruit this year. But for the sake of a bumper crop of the new variety next year, they had to bite the bullet and remove this year’s flowers.
From last November until now, the Gannan Branch had been organizing workers to spray pesticides to eliminate the flowers and use chemical fertilizers to build up the nutrient reserves in the trunks, all in preparation for this year’s grafting.
After being grafted in March and June, the plants would grow for half a year and could flower by November. They would then bear fruit the following year. The yield in the first year might be a little lower, but it would still be around 50 to 60 percent of a full harvest.
Jiang Miao patted Zhang Chengdong’s shoulder. "You’ve all worked hard."
"It’s all part of the job."
The staff at the tissue culture lab were indeed working hard. To guarantee production, the lab had already hired 63 technicians and 149 operators.
However, this was still not enough.
The tissue culture lab’s current workload was immense.
They had to cultivate three new varieties of oil-tea camellia seedlings, for a total of around 20 million plants, as well as genetically modified kapok seedlings, totaling about 3 million plants.
At the same time, they also had to replenish the stock of strawberry, Ginseng Fruit, and Tomato seedlings. Every month, they needed to cultivate approximately 200,000 strawberry seedlings across three varieties, 36,000 Ginseng Fruit seedlings of two varieties, and 36,000 Tomato seedlings of two varieties.
Recently, a new variety, the Vanilla Strawberry, had been added to the list, requiring the cultivation of about one million seedlings per month.
The entire tissue culture lab was basically running around the clock.
To keep up with production, they only took two days off a month.
As a result, they had also received the company’s "Black Iron Labor Model" medals, on top of double pay for working on their days off and triple pay for holidays.
Take Zhang Chengdong, for example, who had recently been promoted to the C2 level. His basic monthly salary was 10,500 yuan, which averaged out to 525 yuan per workday.
So, by working overtime for eight weekend days, he could earn an extra 8,400 yuan in overtime pay.
As for daily work hours, Hailufeng Company discouraged employees from working more than eight hours a day. Even the night shift ended before 11 PM. The company didn’t engage in day-and-night production, mainly out of consideration for its employees’ health.
In fact, Zhang Chengdong and the others quite liked working on weekends. After all, they got double pay.
If the overtime pay was just peanuts, the employees certainly wouldn’t be so willing to work extra hours.
However, their overtime "career" was about to be significantly curtailed, as the company was still expanding the tissue culture lab’s staff.
...
After inspecting the oil-tea camellia seedling cultivation in Zones One, Two, and Three, Zhang Chengdong led him to the lab for genetically modified kapok seedlings in Zone Four. The setup here was more or less the same as in the oil-tea camellia zones.
Next was the strawberry seedling cultivation area in Zone Five.
Currently, in the 1,000 mu of simple greenhouses at Nanfen Village, Vanilla Strawberries were being planted in stages, at an average rate of about 83 mu per month.
The first batch of Vanilla Strawberry seedlings had been planted on November 15 of last year. They would flower after about 75 days (late January), begin to bear fruit after 95 days (mid-to-late February), and the fruit would be ripe for harvest after 125 days (mid-to-late March). The fruiting season would then last until early May.
The Vanilla Strawberries would hit the market in May, becoming a new driver of growth for the company.