Have been growing in small patches in backyard and with that experience wanted to try it in the farm in small area. To the extend possible, wanted to try it in minimum tillage way, hence cut the tall grass in the raised bed using Scythe and then cut it short to ground using brush cutter. This is the combination I am using, Scythe allows to cut the tall grasses easily but since it is heterogenous grass, cutting may be not be that neat, there the brush cutter helps. If there are millipedes, they will be hurt badly, so I just pick them move away before cutting. This can be done with a stick very easily.
I put a line using Homi hoe and put two seeds at 1 feet and covered it using the same tool, but germination was very poor. One is that if the moisture content is not good, germination will be bad and also could see that ants taking away seeds immediately after sowing.
Next time, made sure that there was enough moisture in the soil and also dipped seeds in turmeric powder paste and sown, most of the seeds germinated, was happy about that. A few places it didn't germinate, those places put the seeds once again. Finding that a uniform crop stand is a must to get good yield, so may have to put seeds couple of times, or worst case transplant to places where there is a gap. Also from previous experience, distance between corn plants should be large, at least 1 feet so that plants grow healthy. Now I am seeing, the planting distance really matters...SRI rice tells 1 feet distance, similarly lots more evidence on this..Fukuoka San also tells sparse seeding is good.
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