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