Kept aside one paddy field for no-till experiments, may be around 0.2 acre. It has full of weeds, broadcasted around 3 Kgs of cowpea and cut the grass and mulched. I used Scythe for this and my helper used his bill hook. It took around 3-4 hours to clear the field.
Once the cow pea is established plan is to grow rice in no-till.
30-June-2016
Cowpea has germinated and started growing.. not very thick, hope they will cover the whole field
8-Aug-2016
Cowpea not established well...direct seeding causes lot of seed loss...According to Eric Koperek, it can be upto 90%?? ...so seed ball is the way to go...and also watering at the initial stage should be good so that all seeds germinate well...
11-Aug-2016
8-Sept-2016
Harvested some cowpea...all together may be around 4-5 Kgs...it is really tasty and was distributed to couple of neighbours..felt happy about that. Even though harvest is minimal so was the effort..
Some seeds also...
Cowpea harvest is over, now has to plan for the next crop...may be green gram and sesame.
17-Sept-2016
Got couple of rains after a gap, thought this is the right time to start the green gram cultivation. Last time cow pea germination was bad, this time instead of cutting with Scythe used Honda brush cutter. It cuts uniformly and cuts very low, so weed will be held back for some more time. Could not complete the whole field, rain started in between....completed close to half of the field. First broadcasted green gram in a small patch and cut it and then again broadcasted to another patch, in this way, I need not walk through the weedy field, scared of viper even though I have a gun boot.
Ideal tool for this use may be a Lawnmower, please see my friend Eric Koperek's quoute on this...
You can run a 25 acre ~ 10 hectare commercial vegetable farm with nothing other than a common lawnmower.
2-Oct-2016
In another part of the field, grass was quite dense hence used scythe first to cut and move the long grass and then cleared with brush cutter. This was way field was much cleaner, in this area, green gram germinated well. Totally around 4Kgs of green gram was used. Applied cowdung slurry once.
On seeing this, I felt, it would have been better to cut the long grass and keep it away and then water the field and allow all the weeds to germinate and then use the brutal force of the brush cutter to clear the weeds, then sow the green gram and cover it with cut grass. In conventional cultivation, they till the land and then allow the weeds to germinate and then plough once again to clear the weeds. If we are using weed cutter for clearing weeds, the same approach can be used.
17-Oct-2016
Green gram is establishing reasonably well...there is some creeper which gets spread also, removed some of them.....they are not very strong, I just hold on the top portion and then pull, they just come off...got a small rain, hence ground is reasonably wet..has to apply cowdung slurry couple of times more...
23-Oct-2016
Applied cowdung slurry for a second time...Palani was spraying it from the top, so one portion gets deposited on the leaves and gets wasted. Next time should ask him just to pour to the ground.
9-December-2016
Green gram was harvested, got very minimal yield..some were eaten by birds..and towards the last stage some creeper weed took over. Broadcasted around 2 Kgs of cowpea, 0.5Kg of finger millet, 0.25Kg of sesame and some maize seeds. Basically wanted to grow some thing to keep the filed occupied so that weeds does not take over. Ideal choice was a low growing cover crop like white clover, but that is still missing.
Field after green gram cultivation...
Field after broadcasting seeds and cutting using Scythe...First a longer blade was used, but it was bit heavy for continuous cutting, after that slighly shorted and thinner blade was used, it was quite cool. I took around 8 hours to cut it completely. Plan was to irrigate it immediately, but water pump was not working, so it took 2 days to irrigate it, not sure about the seed loss from ants, could see ants all over the field.
17-December-2016
Cowpea has germinated well in most of the places..two days back when I visited, could not see much, but now it is clear..
At this place germination is bad, so put some more seeds as a correction....
23-January-2017
Most of the Cowpea plants wilted and died, partially due to high temperature and also felt seeds were not of good quality. Seeds were very small, compared to what I normally get from the shop. Time to save all the seeds.
Some of the maize and finger millet seeds are growing fine. Sesame were not seen at all, those tiny seeds looks to be very sensitive, they come up well in well ploughed/powdered soil.
weed pressure has reduced partly because of mulch and partly because of hot climate.
