Sunday, October 21, 2018

Finger Millet Cultivation - 2018 - Season 2

First season rice crop is not harvested, before that, just sow 12Kgs of 'Matta Champavu' another traditional variety of duration 90-100 days duration. Seeds were soaked in water for 24 hours, and sown. It will take another one week for the first season crop to harvest. 

Basically trying to do no-till cultivation for the 2nd crop, but the existing seed which is 'Kunjukunju' also will germinate, so it will be a mix, not sure if things will work out.

Total expenses tracking:

Seed bed preparation -1 hour job by Palani - 150/-
Tractor with rotovator - 2 hour 10 minutes - 2200/
Transplanting 4 womens - 2 days - 2200/-
Watering - 325/-

Total - 4875/-


18-October-2018
Harvest of monsoon crop is completed today and could not see any rice germinated which was broadcasted around 10 days before. The reason could be the lack of moisture, since watering had stopped, the field dried up very fast, without giving the soaked rice seeds to germinate. The best option should have been do one more watering on the day of broadcasting and then broadcast pre-germinated seeds, after broadcasting watering is not possible since it may move the seeds here and there and causing distribution issue.

By the time the watering was stopped, the weeds started growing...ideally the rice should have been growing by this time, that is possible only if the pre-germinated seeds are put.




29-November-2018
Decided to cultivate finger millet this time as the second crop, planning to crop rotate after rice, but since rice was not meeting the requirements, was forced to try it. Anyway since the sown rice didn't come up, so thought of trying finger millet, which requires less water.

Bought 2 Kgs of finger millet from Palakkad, Organic store called, 'Jaiva Kalavara', and my farm helper Palani tilled one area using spade and fork and put this seed and later watered.



5-December-2018

Finger millet germinates quickly in 2-3 days..



15-December-2018

It is growing just fine.


04-January-2019

Irrigated the whole field and after 3 days rotovated it, took 2 hours to complete it. Moisture was little on the more side and some clumps have formed, may be could have done after 5-6 days.



06-January-2019

Transplanting was done after making the field wet. 4 women laborers worked for 2 days. Seedlings was having shortage, a small portion of the field was left free.




13-April-2019

Within 2 weeks, it started flowering...not sure why...finally got only a few heads..may be a seed issue, or timing.





3 comments:

Unknown said...

Super.. where did you find Chambav?

Nandakumar said...

Got Matta chambav from a farmer in Palakkad. Now a days, it is cultivated in some places around. But that experiment didn't go well, may be I should have sown germinated seeds and that also after watering the field nicely.

Regards,
Nandan

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