Sowing pre-germinated rice seeds a usual practice followed by farmers. In no-till, using seed ball I don't get uniform rate, not sure the exact reason, may be I have to put simply more seed balls. Fukuoka san used to establish the germination and again put seeds, so this looks to be a practice to follow.
Anyway wanted to try sowing pre-germinated seeds this time.Put seeds in water for 24-hours and kept then in jute sack for 12 hours and seeds starts germinating. This was put in the field after cutting grass. The field has tall grasses, cut it using scythe and my helper did it with sickle and cutting of the area was finished in 3 hours time for 0.05 acre. Later I cut this area using brush cutter with plastic string and took another 3.5 hours to complete it. I am finding that Scythe-Brush cutter combination works better, to clear small grasses brush cutter is good. Next day, the field was flooded and then seeds were sown. Wanted to mulch back, but there was some mulch left in the ground, thought that should be enough.
After sowing the seed, I didn't mulch with the remaining grass since the seeds were having its roots out and stepping on that may destroy it. So one more improvement is to just have it germinating so that after sowing, we can still walk on the field to mulch it some more.
30-June-2019
Could see peacock and chickens picking up seeds. Chickens were real nuisance, they were coming again and again, so not sure what will happen to this. May be if I had mulched it, completely, then some seeds would have saved, I didn't do fearing that, stepping on seeds, would kill it.
16-July-2019
Since seeds were pre-germinated, they are ahead of grass, but grass some time overtakes them after wards. May be more seeds would have crowded out weeds, that is some thing to be tried for next season.
19-Aug-2019
No weeding was done, still rice is just managing..
06-October-2019
Grass and rice plants growing together..In some area, there is good establishment of rice plants..May be putting more seeds and mulching would help. But feel sowing germinated rice plant is the way to go in our climate till good humus is developed.
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