Trying traditional rice variety chuvanna modan in grow bag

 

27-Nov-2025

Chuvanna modan varity seeds were kept in cowdung water for 24 hours and sown

Trying traditional paddy variety Erumakkari in grow bag

 I took 11 seeds of Erumakkari rice variety and put in cowdung water for 24 hours and then sown in a grow bag. This is to multiply and get more seeds.

27-Nov-2025

Small variety taro

 I keep cultivating a small variety of taro which I like very much. Wild boars don't this at the beginning, but when no other food is available, they start eating this also. When they started digging and eating, I just harvested most of it in one shot. I removed skin of some and gave to my wife for cooking, and included some mother seeds also to see if they cook well. Mother seeds are the seeds which you had put last time and they would have become a large one. But that was tasting bit itchy and does not cook like other portions. So decided to plant them back and see if they again comes up or not.

Finding seeds of a traditional paddy variety called Erumakkari

I first heard about this traditional paddy variety from a neighbor grandma whom I met during 2013 Onam Holidays.  She had cultivated many traditional varieties and one of them was Erumakkari which gave good yield also not much care had to be given. The full report on this - https://farming-experiments.blogspot.com/2013/09/meeting-old-farmer.html.

 After few years I talked to a farmer lady called Indira Lawrence from Kodakara,Trichur who cultivates this variety. I went and met her and collected some seeds, she had plenty of seeds and she gave me close to 250gms of this seed. I kept this seed and sown in next rainy season, but it didn't germinate. May be If I had kept the seeds in refrigerator it would have germinated, it had lost its viability. I told this farmer about this and she promised to give some seeds in the next season and I again went and collected this seed, she was around 80KMs away from my house. But this time also it didn't germinate and I was desperate and again she promised to give more seeds in the next year.

This year she sent me some seeds by post and I sent her happy hill rice seeds of Masanobu Fukuoka. This time when I received seeds it was slightly different from previous seeds, it was bit longer but she confirmed it was the same Erumakkari variety and it has awn. I germinated few seeds in a grow bag, and this time it germinated, but I thought, I should collect the more pure form of this variety. I heard that RARS of Pattambi has this seeds, so I called them and they said, they can not spare the seeds since they don't have such program to share the seeds with farmers now, earlier they used to share.

Recently while talking to a rice seed conservator called Sathyanarayana Beleri who conserves more than 650 rice varieties and has won Plant genome savior award and also Padmashree from Indian Government, I mentioned about this variety and he said he has some contact in RARS Pattambi and I could collect the seeds from there, if they agree. After few days, he told that seeds are with Faseela teacher and just tell her that Moosa sir has sent me, and seeds would be handed over. I was excited to collect seeds and started towards RARS Pattambi.

When I reached there, I called Faseela teacher and she was not in the office because of medical emergency and she would come after few hours and I told her that I will wait. While walking to the Seed Complex, an auto stopped near me and promised to take to the place since they were also going in that direction since it was a long walk, I just got in. Those were two young men going to meet scientist Moosa since I had time I also went along with them. They were there to discuss about chilli and brinjal farming in commercial scale and wanted some advice from Moosa sir. I also participated in their discussion and later told about my intention of my visit. He was very down to earth person and was very happy to discuss about many things about farming. His views were very practical and talked to him for close to 30 minutes. He was knowing about Indira Lawrence and he had a booklet of farmers who conserve traditional paddy seeds.

Moosa sir was suggesting to use Vysakh and start cultivation in May and with 'podi vitha' instead of the transplanting method I tried. Also other varieties like Swarna Modan, Katta Modan etc..

After having lunch in the canteen went and met Faseela teacher. She was also very co-operative and was discussing many things about different rice varieties. She mentioned Swarna Modan is one variety which they don't have with them right now and also Erumakkari was medicinal variety and she used that in her Phd work. Then I remembered about a lady contacting me over email about the Erumakkari rice variety and I quickly checked mail and it was Faseela teacher a Phd student then. She had identified a person called Suresh in Idukki cultivating this variety but he was not read to spare the seeds. Later she got it from NBPGR and kept seeds here.

I was so happy to get Erumakkari original seeds after a long struggle and sent half of it to Sathyanarayana and half is kept in refrigerator. I will be sowing some 10 seeds now itself.

Erumakkari rice seed

From the fields of RARS Pattambi...some variety called Akshaya

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.