Establishing a uniform crop

I always found that establishing a cover crop or grain crop is a difficult task since either germination will be bad or germinated seeds does not push through mulch. Initially when I started natural farming, I never used to spend more time in preparing field. Later I understood that more time and care has to be spent in preparing a field. In conventional farming where they do tilling, they spend lot of time in making field uniform and they prepare bunds and field will look really nice. May be since I am new into the farming, I didn't observe these things closely.

First few trials, when I tried to establish sunhemp, I just broadcasted sunhemp and then cut the grass, in some places mulch were very thick and some places grass was not cut properly and ultimately sunhemp was not established uniformly and lot of grasses also grew along with it. The issue is that when you want to grow a grain crop after sunhemp, that also won't get established uniformly.

Another problem was, the germination won't happen uniformly. Later I found that this is some thing even Fukuoka san had experienced. In one straw revolution in the chapter 'Farming Among Weeds' it says

"White clover is sown about one pound per quarter acre, winter grains 61⁄2 to 13 pounds per quarter

acre. For inexperienced farmers or fields with hard or poor soil, it is safer to sow more seed in the beginning. As the soil gradually improves from the decomposing straw and green manure, and as the farmer becomes more familiar with the direct seeding non-cultivation method, the amount of seed can be reduced"

"Between mid-November and mid-December is a good time to broadcast the pellets containing the rice seed among the young barley or rye plants, but they can also be broadcast in spring. Rice is sown 41⁄2 to 9 pounds per quarter acre. Toward the end of April Mr. Fukuoka checks the germination of the fall-sown seed and broadcasts more pellets as needed"

So ultimately it is better to use more seeds in the beginning and also check if germination has happened otherwise some more seeds can be sown. This is very practical and that is what I like about Masanobu Fukuoka and he was a complete farmer.

Importance of timing

There are two cases where I hit the real importance of timing in farming. One was weeding in the last june (2012) where I had put upland rice after tilling the land. After putting the seeds, and after the germination, the land was very clean and weeds started coming afterwards. Initially they were very small and I thought, I will deweed after some time or some time the rice may grow above that. But rice plants were not growing above them, rather weeds got very dense and rice plants were hardly seen. If I had deweeded at the initial stage, it would have been very easy since pulling out small weeds are much easier, but once they become established it becomes almost difficult.

Second time I realised about the timing was starting the cultivation, after growing sunhemp as covercrop. In one area, I had grown sunhemp for an year, and towards the end of summer the field was very clean, since sunhemp and grass all had dried well. I should have started the rice cultivation there with the first rain, but it got delayed and weeds started growing there. Once the weeds establish, it is impossible to start cultivation there. So a delay of 1 or 2 weeks spoils everything and one season is lost.

Land underneath green cover

In one part of the farm, I have stopped tilling for the last 1 year and I had grown cowpea as cover crop in the summer after cutting the grass with brush cutter and they had established fairly well. After the rain started, some of the cowpea plants were growing and some had perished. Grass also was growing in some places and today I cut that area using a scythe and since lot of mulch was there I had kept to one side and then put sunhemp seeds. Hopefully after this, I should be able to plant some grain crops, pearl millet or raggi.

I could see under the green cover land is fertile and overall weeds were less. Especially only a couple of weed species are there, while in some part of the farm, I could see many more varieties of weeds. I can see that the land is much relaxed and I could even take up a crop now, if I clean the existing grass more neatly.

Here are some pictures..

Handling mulch

Recently I am finding that some times, the mulch at the surface becomes too thick and planting through it is difficult. If the mulch is too thick, seeds does not push through it and number of plants per unit area becomes small and it becomes a problem in uniformly establishing the crop. In that case, after cutting the grass using brush cutter or scythe, I move the excess grass to one side of the farm using a rake tool which has many teeth. I make sure that mulch is uniform and planning to move back the mulch back to the field probably after the crop is harvested and the land is left uncultivated.

Birds fighting against snake

Last summer was very harsh and after that when rain started, we started getting good rains. I started planting mango trees on this season, bought around 70 mango grafted saplings. I was planting these saplings with the helper 'Palani' and heard some birds making lot of noise at one part of the farm. This bird is called 'Poothan keeri' in Malayalam, has to find the English name. It has got a brown color feather and they move in groups and some time can seen them lifting the leaves and looking for worms.

I thought of inspecting what is happening and why they are making so much noise. When I approached I could see the two dogs 'Julie and Rugmani' also watching the scene with lot of interest, but they were not barking. These dogs follow me some time and I give one part of my lunch with them.

I could see a big rat snake on a small subabul tree and birds very upset with it. I could see a nest on the tree, but couldn't see anything there. After seeing me, the snake left the scene and I continued with my work. After some time, again the same kind of noise was there, this time at a slightly different place. I again went there and the same snake was moving there, and birds were sitting here and there making noise and snake was chasing away birds. After some chasing a way, snake quickly moved to one direction where there was a small bird lying and just caught it. It was a small bird so it was almost completely inside its mouth and after some time, it went away with its prey.

I just watched it and didn't interfere with it.

26-November-2018

One more encounter with rat snake...I was waiting for the auto at the farm, on the way back. Saw a big rat snake crawling into a pile of wood near the house. Just watched it, then heard a small bird crying and could see a small jungle babbler looking at me. It looks like, rat snake left it after seeing me. I tried to catch the bird and it got shelter inside the wood pile, got a stick and caught it and left it at a tree, but it again flew back to the ground, again caught it and left on another tree branch, and its parents were making sound and following it, hope it will survive the snake attack. Auto had come and I had to leave the farm.

Holding back weeds

When tilling is stopped number of weeds decreases considerably especially when there is enough decomposed mulch on the surface. I had seen this after growing sunhemp in one part of the farm and after summer, all the cover crop and grass had dried and surface was clean. This happens especially after summer with no artificial irrigation given, if irrigation was given in the summer, grass will be there all around and starting cultivation in the next rainy season is difficult.

We should start putting the seeds before the grass starts coming after the rains. If seeds are put and if they over crowd, then weeds will be held back. But if we the process of putting seeds is delayed, then grass take over and cultivation becomes difficult.

Some thoughts on natural tuber cultivation

Two years back, I got around 10Kgs of turmeric seeds from our friends Raghu/Nisha of http://www.greenlocal.org/. That time I arranged two farm laborers and got around 6 raised beds and put the turmeric. When there was heavy grass later in the raised bed, weeded once. Later in the summer harvested and yield was OK, even though no input was given. During harvesting, I wanted to retain the raised bed, but this didn't happen. It was all dismantled. Some of the turmeric was powdered in the mill and sold and some was given to friends and relatives. Feedback was good and felt very happy about it.

In the next season, I wanted to do turmeric, but after calculating the labor cost, thought of doing it without using much effort. That time, I had got that area tilled. So instead of putting in raised bed, I just put the seeds in directly in the soil and then sunhemp was sown all around. Sunhemp grew well and in between turmeric also had come up. But later in the summer I was not able to locate the turmeric plants since it had already dried and there was mulch all over and land was too dry to harvest.

This year after rains, turmeric plants came up and I picked up most of them and I could see that yield was very poor. But I wanted to atleast save the seeds, so planted in area through mulch. But all these plants are kept together so that harvesting is easy. Later put one raised bed and planted some turmeric and applied some dried cowdung over this. But the raised bed creating was back breaking, it is lot of effort, so decided that at any cost will retain that raised bed to reduce the effort.

Some time back an article came about one Mr. Pappachan in Kannur who cultivates ginger without using any manuring. He has mainly pepper and ginger and he uses Mucuna as cover crop. When the ginger is harvested, he leaves one portion there so that in the next season it comes up. This looks to be a real natural farming sequence for tubers. He is a national innovation award winner and this details can be seen here - http://nif.org.in/upload/innovation/4th/329-papachchan-style-of-pepper.pdf

For an initial boost, raised bed may be OK, but later I am planning to retain it and reuse for tuber cultivation and in between planning to grow some green manure for keeping the fertility. Some pictures of my raised beds

Photo of Pappachan whose article came out in Karshakashree

19-May-2018

Now a days, it became the norm, I don't make raised beds, rather keep them and plants turmeric at the start of the rainy season. Recently while harvesting taro, I kept 12 of them back with mulch applied and could see that they are coming up well. So this makes me think, during harvesting itself, it can be planted back and saves the effort. 

These are the lines from Natural Farming Source book by Masanobu Fukuoka - "As for potatoes,once these are planted in the orchard, they will grow each year from the same pot, crawling vigorously along the ground to lengths of five feet or more and never giving into weeds. If just small potatoes are dug up for food and some tubers always left behind, there will never be any want of seed potatoes"

19-June-2019

Today there was a call from Francis (Pappachan) asking how is my ginger cultivation going on. I told him, I just cultivate only turmeric, so he wanted me to try ginger in the following way.. Place the ginger pieces after cutting the weeds and put some dried cowdung over it and cover it with mulch not very thickly. Now as the mulch decomposes, keep adding new mulch and continue this for 3 times. No need to apply any manure, he says without applying any manure, the crops has better disease resistance. I have promised him, will do a trial plot for ginger in this way.

09-December-2021

After a long time I just called Francis chettan just for a chat. This time his wife took the phone and when enquired about Francis chettan, she said he is no more. He died in 2020 February, he had cancer. He became part of nature, such a great soul.