Python

Few months back there was a talk that a JCB operator had seen a python while doing the excavation work in the nearby farm. It disappeared after that, and no one had seen it afterwards. I was cutting the Pureria vine in one part of the farm and after cutting the top portion, one part of the snake was seen. It was a huge one, it was not viper from the markings. Only one part was visible.

I could see that it was a python, but it was not moving at all.Also it was hiding below the vines of the Pureria, normally I never saw snake in that position. It was not moving since it had eaten some thing, its belly was bulging. Called the neighbour person and 3-4 people came with him. I also called Kollengode forest office and they said, it will go and won't do any harm. One neighbor was telling, we will just kill it, I was very sure that it should not be killed. Sometimes you have to be very firm with these kinds of people. I was bit hesitant to leave it there, since we will be working in the grass. They agreed that, they will leave it in forest if handed over to them. One person Babu was called and he said he can catch it. 

Finally we cleared the grass and could see the tail, and Babu was holding the tail and two persons held the jute sack at its neck side. With some difficulty it started crawling into the sack and we tied and took it to the forest station in my car. I had to pay 500/ to Babu and overall expense was around 1200/, but felt happy that its life was saved and relocated it. Yet another neighbour was telling, it's meat is very tasty and next time, he should be informed while seeing one. I am not going to do that, I like to give shelter to such creatures, even though some people think that they are insignificant creatures.

Taro - easy to grow and produce lots of food

Generally root crops are easy to grow and they come up well in natural farming conditions, without much care. Here is the harvest from a single taro plant, this is enough to make curry for 2-3 days. Few seeds were planted back in the soil.

Karpooram mango flowering

This mango variety is called Karpooram and is bought from a nursery in Mannuthy,Trichur. Few months back, I had pruned all the inner branches, now it started flowering. It is a very tasty variety and has smell of camphor when ripe and you get this smell when cut. This is not affected by worms.

16-05-2023

There are reasonably good amount of mangoes on this tree, to be seen if the pruning helped, have to try pruning this year also.

Super Napier - for mulching

There are two super napier clumps which gives lots of mulch. Cut it and used to mulch young mango saplings and also coconut trees. It gives lots of mulch, cutting and carrying to other parts is difficult, if the trees to be mulched are nearby, then it is much better.

Cutting has to be done very close to the ground. Then it grows back very fast, in rainy season, it may be ready for cutting in 1.5 months time. The good thing is that the mulch takes time to decompose hence provide good shelter from rain and sun.

Have to form a time table, so that cutting can be done at least twice or thrice an year.

Mulching to see coconut tree response

In one area, I have planted Super Napier grass, Mexican sunflower and other types of weeds growing. Super Napier gives lots of mulch which decomposes slowly and Mexican sunflower gives lots of mulch which decomposes fast. Cut and mulched both of them and weeds at the base of the coconut tree, would like to see how fast does the super napier grows back and the effect of mulching on the trees. One tree is in bad condition, while another tree is relatively OK.

Super Napier after cutting...

Mulch at the base of the coconut tree

This tree is not doing good

This tree is reasonably OK

Happy hill rice - October

Trying happy hill rice again, so that there are more seeds in the next rainy season. Soaked seeds in water for 24 hours and then kept them in wet cloth and after germination kept in seed tray. Seed tray is filled with home made compost and coir brick and seeds were planted. In couple of days, seeds came up and after 12 days, there were transplanted to the area. This area was previously mulched with leaves, ideally thick cover of leaves should be left to decompose atleast for 2 months and then used. If the leaves are not decomposed well, then making lines is difficult, ideally the mulch should be decomposed well to make the seeding easy.

It has been tried in 3 places...

9-November-2022

Watering this everyday

No-till rice - some rethoughts

My no-till experiment started in the month of June 2022, looks OK so far. There are two areas one was .05 acre and grass was growing in this, but this area is not tilled close to 3 years now. Another area is 0.15 acre and this area was having pureria javanica growing close to an year and all weeds were eliminated nicely.

In 0.05 acre, I cut the grass using Scythe and then using brush cutter so that all the existing weeds are cut and cleared. One problem was that there were millipedes in the mulch some of there were killed while using the brush cutter. But after cutting the grass, the ground was clean, like in conventional rice field, after puddling, it will be completely free of weeds. In this case, the grass will grow back quickly, but in conventional rice fields, they will take lot of time, before that rice will be established. Seeds were put using a row seeder which opens up the ground and pre-soaked seeds for 12 hours were sown. The variety was an upland variety which grows tall, around 4.5 feet and can compete with grass well. Also in the last time, there were good rain and standing water in the field which controlled weeds naturally.

Overall, to conclude, if the weeds are cut nicely and a tall variety is used, chances of success in no-till rice is more. If there is standing water to control weeds, it is much better. In this case, I didn't use cut grass as mulch since I thought, it may interfere with weeding, if at all I have to do that. On a later thought, if decomposed mulch is used for mulch, it would be much better.

In 0.15 acre, since Pureria Javanica was growing and all weeds were removed, after cutting Pureria, the field was completely weed free. Here also seeds of another upland rice variety was used which grows to 4-5 feet. Here also mulch was not used, but got better weed control since rain was good and there were standing water in the field.

11-July-2023 (Current plan for no-till)

After the rice cultivation, sesame was tried out, it didn't come out uniformly, so yield was very very poor. After this field was left uncultivated, since anyway establishing pureria was not an option since there was no moisture at this point. As usual grass started growing and took the complete field. With start of summer rain, sown cowpea but this didn't control the grass completely. 

At this point one option looks to be just keep mulching the field after the 2nd crop so that strong grasses won't grow well. Even if there are few grasses at the time of cultivation, that can be easily pulled out. To mulch the field after 2nd crop thinking of growing some fodder grass around the field which decomposes very slowly and hence provides good weed control. June to October will be 1st crop (some times rain starts at July only) and September to December would be 2nd crop after this 5 months (January to May) will be idle period and this time field should be completely mulched where ever there is weeds. To what extend the mulch will be decomposed by the next June has to be seen. Mostly the mulch has to be kept aside and then only seeds can be sown.

Cutting and mulching pureria

In some area, Pureria Javanica (cover crop) is established very well, since the rains have receded cutting them and mulching around the coconut trees. Scythe is used for cutting and a hoe fork is used for collecting it and spreading around the coconut base. Scythe with home made handle is really light and works very well for this cover crop cutting.

Cutting local fodder grass for mulching

Recently a local grass is growing at different locations in farm. Wanted to check how long it takes to grow back these grass, today cut and mulched the coconut base, also wanted to check the decomposition rate.

14-October-22

After a month...it is almost ready for next cutting,lots of biomass

25-October-22

Ready for cutting...

One single grass has so many tillers....

Used the cut grass to mulch around few gondaraj saplings nearby and also coconut trees nearby

25-November-2022

Again cut and mulched one portion...

Mulching plants close to Jackfruit

Now a days, every time I plant a sapling, I plant couple of Mexican sunflower cuttings and also few grass clumps, this could be Super napier or some grasses which grows naturally in the farm. Mexican sunflower cuttings decompose very quickly while grass cuttings decompose very slowly.

The picture shows the jackfruit sapling after mulching with mexican sunflower and grass.

J-33 jackfruit

Recently heard about Thailand variety jackfruit called J-33. The main feature is that it fruits early and fruit is extremely tasty. Saw some youtube videos about this and decided to buy some of these. National Rose garden Mannuthy,Trichur was having the saplings, bought 4 of these, each costing 100/.

Planted them today and gave some protection so that, it does not get eaten by deer/goats

J-33 plant 3

J-33 Plant-4

Minimum till rice - monsoon season

I have 0.15 acre kept aside for no-till crops and in this monsoon I tried minimum till rice here. In 0.1 acre I had grown pureria for an year and it became completely weed free except the pureria itself. I had cut pureria in the summer so that most of it decays on the field. Because at the time of planting heavy mulches has to be kept aside, if we just cut at the time of planting most of the mulch had to be kept aside.

After cutting and cleaning, made rows using the row maker and then seeded 4-month duration upland rice in this area. It came up reasonably well, may be little more attention to be paid to put more seeds at places where germination is bad or transplant in this area. To my surprise this area retains water well now.

In 0.05 acre, 6 months duration upland rice has been tried, and here in 6 rows happy hill rice also is sown, germination was bad in some places. Transplanted in few places where there was big gap.

24-August-2022

07-Sept-22

19-Sept-2022

4 months old variety

6 months old variety

happy hill rice flowered

19-Sept-2022

Birds are a real threat when grains are forming and maturing, also since the number of heads is small, the whole crop may be eaten by birds. So thought of putting some birds scare, and amazon was costly, hence checked with local store and they asked if it is to be put in the field, they already have a ready made solution. Baught just one at 60/ and it had strings at the end, seems to be working so far.

22-Sept-22

To my surprise the bird scare is working beautifully so far..

08-October-2022

6 months variety started flowering....it has grown quite tall, 4-4.5 feet

18-Oct-22

9-November-2022

In 6-months duration rice, was harvested got some seeds, may be just 100gms...In 4-month variety, grain formation didn't happen, so in both fields, 750gms of sesame was sown and cut back the rice. Grain formation was bad, may be because of Gandhi bug, there were too many of them. 

21-December-2022

Sesame came up in some areas, in some places it came up very close, sowing density has to be adjusted. May be mix with sand and sow....Not much weed pressure, if the crop was uniform, then would have spent some time in weeding and cleaning it up. Also crop is not very healthy, may have to apply some cowdung or chicken manure and also might have to irrigate once or twice at least in the beginning to establish a uniform crop. May have to re-seed after seeing germination, this is what Fukuoka san suggests.

12-Jan-23

Pods are being formed in the sesame nicely. One good thing is that, cows and deer does not eat this.

03-Feb-2023

Harvested sesame..some pods are really ready and grains started falling