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.

New Indigenous Mango tree variety - Thrissurkkaran - planted in front of the house

 I have planted one more indigenous mango variety called Thrissurkkaran in front of the house. This mango seed was collected last year and it has been growing in the terrace for an year now. Planted and cut and mulched grass around it and there was some spoiled straw around, that also spread around it. This was found by 'Nadan Mavukal' facebook group and has been promoting it since this is a regular early bearer and a very tasty variety.

22-June-2025

Stylosanthes Hamata and rice

 I had been growing Stylosanthes Hamata in a small patch in backyard garden. It survived summer and with rain, it established well and there were not much other weeds in that patch. Hence wanted to try rice sowing in that patch, not sure how it will compete with grass. Even after cutting it will come back and rice plants will take more time to come above. The seeds were of Rakthashali and put that in water for 24 hours and sown in the place and cut and mulched the grass.

28-June-2025

Rice seedlings are growing,and stylo mulch gives good weed control. I should have put more seeds, since generally in direct broadcasting, lots of seeds gets lost due to various reasons. Stylo does not grow back very aggressively, hence rice does not have good competition. There is heavy rain now, which may be holding stylo back,typically leguminous species does not like much water, while grass varieties goes unaffected, that is a good combination

07-July-25

So far weed control has been very good, rice seedlings are coming up, some weeds are seen, but not weeded yet.

27-July-2025