7 Tips to Grow Lots of Sugarcane

Hello everyone this is Jack. Well in this video I'm going to share seven tips to grow lots of sugarcane. As you can see I have a sugarcane patch here and it's growing tall and it's producing a lot of sugarcane. I have planted that last February and now I'm harvesting this sugarcane. I've already started a lot more sugarcane that's in the ground that's going to be ready next year and sugarcane comes back year after year. You can grow sugarcane up to four years. Commercially sugarcane is planted every year or every two years. So after one year of growth I have nice stalks in here that I'm going to harvest and let's share those tips with you. Tip number one. Sugarcane likes tropical climate. It does not like weather that's too hot or too cold. So sugarcane will grow best in Florida, Hawaii or tropical regions. However you're not out of luck. I am in zone 9. I'm in zone 9a. So I'm growing sugarcane. We do get frost so sugarcane is a little bit frost hardy. So if you get light frost you can grow sugarcane in your region. So your sugarcane will grow best from zone 8 to zone 10. Tip number two. You can start sugarcane in water. What you can do is get a sugarcane stalk. Get a nice plump thick stalk with eyes on it. Cut it and put it in water while exposing the top part of sugarcane out of water. Otherwise sugarcane will drown. I made a separate video on how to start sugarcane from sugarcane cuttings in water and you can get a head start on growing sugarcane. So if you live in a region where it gets colder you can get a head start on growing sugarcane by starting sugarcane in water indoors and then plant sugarcane outside in April or May. Tip number three. The planting site. Sugarcane loves full sun. So choose an area that receives full sun to plant sugarcane. If you have a shady area sugarcane will not grow as well. So you can see a nice patch of sugarcane back here because we get full sun in this region and sugarcane is doing extremely well. Tip number four. Plant spacing and row spacing. When planting sugarcane space your rows at least three to four feet apart and when you're planting sugarcane stalks plant sugarcane stalks at least two feet apart. That'll give it optimal space to grow bigger and produce a lot of sugarcane. Tip number five. Watering. Sugarcane loves lots of water. Sugarcane likes to be moist all the time. So provide lots of water to sugarcane to grow lots of sugarcane. I've made a separate video on how often and how much to water your plant. So check that video out if you're interested. Tip number six. Fertilization. Sugarcane likes lots of fertilizer. Sugarcane likes nitrogen and phosphorus. You can provide a lot of fertilizer to sugarcane and sugarcane just will eat it up. You can even provide direct chicken manure to sugarcane. It won't burn sugarcane. It'll just eat it up and it will grow very very vigorous. So provide lots of fertilizer to sugarcane and don't worry about burning up your sugarcane. Tip number seven. Patience. Sugarcane requires lots of patience to grow because it takes about 10 to 11 months to harvest sugarcane after you first plant your sugarcane. However sugarcane does come back year after year. Like I said earlier it's best to plant sugarcane every two years but you can get your sugarcane patch growing up to four years. A note. If you're using direct chicken manure do not use chicken manure towards the end of harvest season. So at the end of three to four months do not use direct chicken manure. Only use well composted fertilizer at that point and last two months of growing sugarcane does not need any more fertilizer. I started sugarcane cuttings in water last February and they grew for about two months and then I planted them in ground in April and now they're ready to harvest in January all the way up till February. So they almost took 11 months to up to a year to grow sugarcane. Now these are very mature. They're full of sugar. There's lots of juice in them. So it's time to harvest the sugarcane and then juice this sugarcane. All right let's get in there and get some nice stalks. Here's a nice one right here. Really nice stalk of sugarcane. When you peel away the leaves you can't you see the actual sugarcane underneath. So if you live in a southern hemisphere actually the seasons are reversed. So you'll be planting anywhere around August and then harvesting in June and sugarcane is really difficult. All right let me harvest this stalk right here. Check it out. Once you peel away wow look at all of this beautiful sugarcane. All right so I'm harvesting this sugarcane and I'm going to harvest the rest as well and I'm cleaning this up. I'm just removing all of these dead leaves around this sugarcane stalk. Well check out all of this harvest. I actually have a lot more sugarcane that I need to clean up but I cleaned up these and this is probably about 40 to 50 pounds of sugarcane. I have about another 40 to 50 pounds. So we probably harvested about 100 pounds of sugarcane and now it's time to juice this sugarcane. A note you can also add wood chips around your sugarcane plants as well. Wood chips helps to suppress weeds and also retains moisture. However sugarcane grows so vigorously that it outcompetes the weeds. So if you keep your soil moist all the time you really don't need to add wood chips. Wood chips will help certainly. However sugarcane will grow so vigorously it will fill in the whole area and it will outcompete the weeds. Now some of the pests and diseases that affect sugarcane. Some of the pests are grubs, sugarcane grubs and sugarcane borers. And I actually don't experience any of that so I don't really you know worry about those. Those are kind of rare instances or if you live in an area in the world where you have that problem that's when you have to worry about it. Some of the diseases contain sugarcane mosaic virus and sugarcane smut stuff like that but I never really experienced that so I don't worry about it. So if you're growing sugarcane in your backyard or you're growing a small area you don't have to worry too much about pests and disease. Well check out the harvest of all of this sugarcane. There's about 100 pounds of sugarcane in here and I'll put it in the wheelbarrow and let's dig it. All right so I got these two nice stalks of sugarcane. I washed them up and I cut the ends and I cut the ends on a slight angle here so it's easier to put it into the machine and let me show you the machine as well. So here's the sugarcane juicing machine. It has this handle that you can turn which turns these wheels that squeeze the sugarcane and extracts the juice out of it. Okay so I'm going to feed the first cane in there and my uncle is going to turn it the other way around. There you go. I'm gonna put the sugarcane right in there. There you go. I have a catchment tray to cast the juice down here. There you go. The rollers are squeezing the sugarcane really well extracting all the juice out of it. So we're going to run this twice into the sugarcane mill to extract the most sugarcane juice out of it out of these canes. All right okay hold on let's let me show you the the juice right here. There you go. Look at this amazing juice out of the cane. All right I'm going to strain this and add this to the pitcher and we're going to keep juicing more sugarcane. Okay so we juice the sugarcane and we're going to run it twice the second time into the machine and while we do so we're going to add some ginger and some lemon in there as well. All right so I'm going to add ginger right in between this sugarcane and also the lemon in there as well and there you go. All right let's squeeze that in there. All right so we have extracted the juice of lemon and ginger in there too. So this is what's left of that lemon half. All the juice has been extracted so this machine is really good for extracting lemon juice or orange juice as well and lots of other things too. Lily loves sugarcane as well. Lily you want this sugarcane stock? You do? Lily there you go and she's gonna be juicing some as well. How's that sugarcane Lily? You're enjoying it? So we got the whole pitcher of sugarcane juice just out of three stocks. That's how much juice in those in those sugarcane stocks. So let's try it out. I added some some salt in there. Added some ice. We already have some ginger and lemon in there. Oh man this is absolutely delicious. It's really sweet but with ginger and lemon it brings out a really good flavor and it's absolutely fabulous. We used to have this as kids in India and farmers would actually be juicing sugarcane out on their fields to make raw sugar and what you can do is you can actually condense this to make raw sugar and which we just used to just stop by and they will just give us a glass of juice and we'll just drink it and it was absolutely amazing and this brings those memories. So this juice is absolutely amazing and we planted a whole patch of sugarcane and next year I'm planning to have a sugarcane festival where you can come and drink sugarcane juice right on our farm. I really hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you in another video.