Saturday, July 2, 2011

Paddy experiment in Monsoon 2011

After failing two times, I thought of doing the paddy in small area. When my first experiment in monsoon 2010 failed, I thought it will be good that if I till the land it will become alright. After harvesting (just got 4Kgs) the paddy of monsoon 2010, I tilled the land using a tractor and broadcasted the seeds and allowed water to stand. But the next day, water was less and lot of the seeds were eaten by peacocks and seeds germinated in only some area. I wanted to try seed balls, but couldn't make it in large scale.Where there was more water, some came up and grew well and it was about to mature it was eaten by goats which some one let free for grazing. My tilling experiment also failed so thought of trying no-till on small area.


Below is  my experiment in Monsoon 2011


In the January had made some raised beds and kept it mulched. The reason for going for this was since I thought small area means I can manage it all alone and also will have sufficient mulching material. If it is successful can replicate it to more area. My paddy field size is about 0.7 acres and I just used around 4 cents (0.04 acre) for this experiment. Also I wanted to see if paddy grows well on the mulched beds and to check if mulching controls the weeds sufficient for growing paddy. On some beds I transplanted paddy seedlings of around 13 days old, but planting on the raised bed was difficult because of mulch. So had to keep the top mulch on one side and then plant. Worked for a day and could complete only couple of beds and it was very tedious job. On another 4 beds sown the seeds and cut and mulched the grass around.

On some beds I am growing sun hemp so that in the next season I can grow paddy. Sun-hemp is growing well and no grass is seen on these beds. Generally I feel, if there is enough mulching done and do not till the land, growth of weeds is less and paddy can be grown. Also there is some minimal grass, cutting and mulching that is much easier. I will keep all posted about the development and will share some photos soon.

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