Saving Ginger/Taro for next season

Ginger is harvested in February and next crop will be put in June/July after rain starts. Till this time seed has to be saved, last time kept harvested ginger in rubber basket with soil, but all were spoiled by the time it had to be planted.

This time, wanted to keep in a pit made in the soil, and covered with soil and also in between it can be kept moist by watering slightly.

Turmeric harvesting and planting

Harvested turmeric which was planted in the last rainy season. In some areas where there was good gap between plants ,weeded and piled soil around the base of plants, those areas yield was good. At the time of harvesting, put some seeds back at those places since that reduces work drastically. This is Fukuoka San's idea of root vegetable cultivation. Also mulched these area's well.

Another abandoned dog to home

This is a bit delayed post...It has been more than 6 months since we have a new dog at home...

Opposite to our farm, a new person came as caretaker with a female dog, a cute dog, he called her 'Pennu'.She was initially a bit hostile to me, but as usual gave her couple of biscuits and she became very close friend. The new caretaker was a bit away from Palakkad and he was doing such jobs in Palakkad since he was badly in need of money. In his previous job, he got this dog and since no one wanted her since it was a female dog, he took her with him.

She was tied at the farm and only at night she was released for some time and Pennu would warm him of wild boars and snakes well. One day when I went there, he was not there and Pennu was tied to a pillar and neighbor lady told that he had asked her to take care of the dog and he would come back after some time and would take her. Neighbor lady used to give her food at the afternoon and in the evening. Whenever I went there, I also fed her. She used to spend whole day there all alone....

He kept on pushing his date of coming back and finally he told, to give the dog to some one. Neighbor lady also was tired of feeding her and was planning to release her. I told this story at home and showed her photo and family was OK to take her. When we visited next time, my daughter's friend Aagy also was there, she named her as Pinky. We quickly made a cage for her and brought her home, she was calm in the car and got adjusted well.

She is very cute and is very much afraid when we take a stick or shout at her. It looks like previous owner used to hit her. She doesn't enter inside house, obeys commands like sit and bring ball back, if biscuits are there in hand. Also if asked she will get into the cage on command. She is not befriended with other dog and once there was a severe fight between them.

I gave her a surname also, now she is Pinky Joseph, and Joseph is her previous owner who left her.

R

Happy Hill Rice - January

In an effort to multiply seeds, doing one more crop of happy hill rice in the backyard. Another area is kept ready with mulch and also applied goat pellet,wood ash and a bit of cowdung slurry. Soil is not disturbed and had mulched heavily but since it might interfere with rice seedling some mulch is removed.

around 150 seeds are kept in cowdung water over night, will be seeding it tomorrow in cowdung slurry.

13-Jan-2022

Made balls with cowdung and then put couple of seeds in each and then made small furrow using a sharp tool and put them at around 15cm distance. Watering in the morning and evening.

16-Jan-2022

I just inspected few seed balls to my surprise there were no seeds in that, termites came from underneath and had eaten those seeds. Upland rice cultivation has more challenges. Other options are pre-germinate seeds and then sow in line and cover it with soil/compost. 

Saw that raw cowdung is favorite food for termites, so avoid them...https://blog.apnikheti.com/organic-measures-termite-control/

07-Feb-2022

In the area below, pre-germinated seeds were sown by January 20th

In the area below, big seed balls with seeds were put and then watered and kept it for germination.

Taro harvesting and seeding again

Had a small raised bed with few taro plants, it was transplanted when some taro plants were growing in Ginger area. Transplanting was done after they had grown a feet or so, but they came up well. Had applied compost once and piled up soil around them and mulched with cut green grass.

The harvest was decent, and after that raised bed was repaired a bit since soil had gone here and there after harvest. The mother seeds were put back along with small seeds which is not normally preferred for curry making. These seeds would come in the next rainy season, and cowpea is put on this bed. So underneath it has taro seeds and on the top there is cowpea which should fix nitrogen for the next taro crop. After this some light mulching was done using cut grass.

Not much tillering in no-till rice?

This year have been doing some experiments with no-till rice. One field is in the farm using Pureria as cover crop which had controlled all strong grasses and gave a clean field to start no-till rice. Had removed all the cut Pureria to one side and sown the pre-germinated rice seeds of an upland variety called 'Katta modan'. The density was more and there was good line spacing. But could see that there is no tillering for the rice. One reason could be that no-fertilizer and soil open to sun and rain, built fertility would have lost? When conventional fields are compared, they till the soil and all the grass and straw will be allowed to decompose and then transplanting starts. Even though field is plowed, it is made fertile and hence growth of rice plants is better.

In natural farming no-till field, even Fukuoka san recommended 600-900 pounds of well decomposed chicken manure per quarter acre. So this is some thing to be seriously considered. Also the field should be covered with mulch.

Turmeric Crop

This year tried a turmeric crop and it was doing well so thought of analyzing what went well. One thing is that soil where this was tried was reasonably deep after years of mulching and not disturbing much. Also in this patch, distance between fingers were almost a foot and this was suggested by worker, he always tell if there is good distance it is better.

Also after couple of months, this was weeded and compost was applied and soil put over this compost and then mulched with fodder grass which decomposes very slowly hence soil cover was there.