Controlling weeds using tarpaulin sheet

 Weed control has been very challenging and farmers use weed control mat or weed fabric etc. They use it in raised beds and also between fruit trees. It is not very environmental friendly, but some thoughts on these lines are coming to me for a short term solution.

It starts with my 0.1 acre rice field and I have been doing no-till farming on this using cover crops and later using heavy mulching using fodder grass. But it is never perfect, when I used Pureria as cover covercrop I could get good weed control, but I had to grow it for 1.5 years to get it completely established. Also after the first crop, then again weeds grow back, white clover kind of covercrop solution is not available still.

Conventionally farmers till and make a weed free ground and establish rice crop and then do couple of manual weeding. But I didn't want to till it since in principle this is my no-till field and hasn't been tilled for 3-4 years now. Anyway getting a tractor or tiller for tilling 0.1 acre is not practical.

In this context I was thinking Weed control mat for 1 month so that weeds are completely eliminated and then remove the weed control mat and keep it safe and use it for next season. In this way, should be able to use it for many years. This is just a thinking, yet to be seen if it works.

In my backyard I used tarpaulin sheet to control weeds, just to see how it goes.

26-Oct-2025

Tarpaulin sheet spread above the weeds, these weeds are not very strong like crabgrass, but will show some results

Tool to cut branches of support species and timber trees

I grow lot of support species for mulch creating and shade in the farm. Shade is very critical for me since the summer is very harsh and no rain season extends to 5-6 months. I have some glyricidea and have planted another 100 or so in this year. In addition to this I have moringa, mahagony, teak and few other local trees. Most of these trees I am planning to cut atleast twice in a year during the rainy season. Once the rain stops, I won't cut them any more.

Coconut buying people using to bring long poles and a special knife attached to it for harvesting coconut. I thought that will be useful for cutting branches of trees since that knife looked very robust and sharp at the same time. Found a local blacksmith and made one knife for 800/ Indian rupees and I also attach it with bamboo pole and cut branches using that. Its shape is little bit tuned for coconut harvesting so that it easily moves to the bunches of coconut. I may have to make one more adjusted to my branch cutting purpose, but it is immensely useful. The knife is tied to the pole using cycle tube piece made like a tape.

Rice sowing starting time

When I did my happy hill rice sowing last time in monsoon, happen to learn a lesson about the timing of sowing. Traditionally rice used to be sown by April 14th with first rain. I was thinking this is the best since when sown in first rain, it gets all the advantage of the coming rain, but the issue is that there is a big gap sometimes between rains and land does not hold the moisture well for that duration. So the seeds sometimes does not germinate completely or gets affected in the dry spell which comes after. This is not a real problem for long duration rice seeds, for e.g which takes 5-6 months to mature. They have enough time to grow again. But for short duration crops which takes 90-100 days, 10 days loss can be very detrimental to growth. Fukuoka san's rice crop was 6 months duration so this might have been OK, but Happy hill rice which I have got is 100 days duration and this gets affected badly. So for short duration crops it is better to sow it with rains established well, may be after June 15th or so.

Gliricedia from seeds

 I have been trying to grow glyricidea from cuttings in large numbers this year. But success rate is very low,lots of them won't grow, it is quite dependent on the rain, may be other factors too. So this time bought some 200 seeds from amazon and trying to grow plants and transplant them. It is bit late since most of the rainy season has completed, but still trying to grow them.

26-Aug-25

The seeds are put in grow bags and they germinate in 3-4 days and growth also is good. Will transplant them after 3-4 weeks, before rain completely recedes

09-Sept-25

A new strategy for seeding - kind of equivalent to seed ball

 On this season, I was seeding rice on my no-till field, cut the grass and made a channel using a sharp tool and put 4-5 seeds at 25cm distance. Wanted to cover the seeds and had lot of compost at hand, so put compost at each seed place so that seeds were covered. This was rather an easy process to cover and each seeds have some compost so that they will get good early growth. But unfortunately rain was less during that time and ants were many, and could see lots of seeds were taken away by ants so could not establish a crop. But this gave a good learning, seeding using a drum seeder also can be done using on a no-tilled plot and later cover the seeds with compost or even cowdung. My friend had mentioned once that in Trivandrum area, rice were seeded in cowdung like this. They will take few seeds and take some cowdung and will bury the seeds in cowdung and will throw it on the ground, it was called as 'chanakathileru' meaning throw in cowdung. I felt this is an equivalent method of making seed balls, only thing is that, this should be done at the start of rainy season and seeds can not wait for long for rain. Since seeds put in cowdung may germinate soon and if rain does not happen, it may just die off. In seedball case, they will wait for rain to come and then it will germinate so will be safe. But making seedball is bit of an extra effort.

Ginger for home consumption

Used to grow few Ginger plants every year, this year thought of growing it for an year of consumption. At the farm, sometime people used to dig and take it so got discouraged to grow it. So at home, tried it in 10 grow bag, started it in May-June time, which is the suggested time frame for ginger crop. Being in grow bag, could apply some compost and cowdung slurry and also kept the base clean without grass and also mulched with straw.

I am also growing it in couple of places in farm, they are also coming up well. Mulched them with fodder grass which takes long time to decompose and hence it looks good. Also in one place, applied mexican sunflower mulch which gets decomposed very quickly. Plan is to grow mulching material at each place so that mulching process is easy.

Green manure trees and shade

 Since I don't irrigate my farm, it gets badly affected in the summer. As I see, wherever there are shades coconut trees are not affected that much. So in this season, I tried to grow as many green manure trees as possible, there are multiple intentions...

- Mulch - to feed soil and also to cover soil from direct sun and rain

- Shade - I stop cutting trees after rain stops and allow them to grow so that they provide good shade in the summer

- Liquid carbon to soil - as per scientists trees provide liquid carbon to soil organisms through their roots

I have planted Glyricedia and Acasia Siamea (Manjakonna) and Moringa in different areas. Glyricedia is planted through cuttings and their survival rate is very low, Acasia Siamea is planted by growing seedlings and most of them survived. Moringa is also planted using cuttings and they also survive well.

Even though main rain season has ended, planning to grow around 100 glyricedia saplings from seed and plant them in the farm in the remaining rainy season. I also watched some regenerative agriculture videos and in one by Byron Grower says, plant as many pioneering species as possible, suggests to plant at every 75cms and cut and mulch. This looks to be very valid, since if there is too much disturbance, we can always cut them back.