Planting coconut saplings

Started planting some coconut saplings where ever I lost trees. Invariably some trees are lost due to disease, drought,lightning or storms..Planted 3 or 4 glyrecedia sticks around the saplings so that they will provide shade in the summer and enough mulching material in the rainy season.

Fukuoka style taro cultivated in backyard

Fukuoka san advises to leave a few tubers behind during harvesting so that planting is also done along with harvesting. Tubers are strong plants and they come through weeds also. In my backyard, I cultivate taro using this method, left a few taros during harvesting and mulched that area heavily. They came up with rains and have been growing wild. Weeded once..

21-October-2019
Harvested one plant yesterday and cleaned up and made curry today, it is tasting excellent.  One plant yield is enough for making curry for 3 days. Two seeds were just put in the same pit so that next year's planting is completed.

03-November-2019

Harvested another 2 plants, one was small, not much yield, but still OK.

9-July-2020

This year's Taro in Fukuoka style...I was using the big seed in some cases, but I feel this rots in the soil. Have to see if this can be used as food and then plant fresh seeds, also instead of 2 may be use 3 small seeds from each bunch.

I had planted casava in the front, it looks like it overcrowds the place a bit...who knows plants may like the company of other plants....

02-Aug-2020

After getting some good rains, taro is establishing well.

Bamboos

Have been planting bamboos ...at the entrance of the farm, there are two, one was planted by late Dr.Rajesh and other was bought from forest research centre Velupadam, Trichur. There are a few yellow bamboos also. All varieties are selected which does not have thorns, thorn varieties are not easy to manage.

Pruning trees

There has been lot of trees growing in between coconut trees. Mainly subabul,rain tree, glyrecedia etc..Rain trees grows very tall and covers the whole area and then cutting them becomes difficult. Also they shade out the crops, so cut them mulched using the leaves and branches. A few mango trees which had come of their own also was competing with coconut trees, cut their top portion and retained the side branches. All of these lot of mulching material which was spread out through out.

New weeder - push-pull hoe

Bought this weeder called push-pull hoe from Amazon orignally from Urvi Agrotech. The handle was done locally, the hoe costed around 650 rupees and handle another 400 rupees, so totally 1000 rupees. Basically was looking for a weeder, which can be used for weeding in raised bed, where I was doing turmeric and other stuff. If we weed couple of times, then practically there won't be any threat from weeds, otherwise weeds just take over and crop fails. I will still go with mulching, so while weeding mulch may have to kept aside and then later put back.

I tried it couple of times, it looks useful.

Coconut Harvest

Farm has around 150 coconut trees and they are harvested on every 2 months. Earlier a person near the farm comes with workers, they climb the trees, pluck it and ladies collect it and then dehusked and taken. Each coconut will be given the current market price and small ones will be counted as half. Now a days, Tamilians from Meenakshipuram/Pollachi side comes and takes it, a single person harvest it using bamboo pole and ladies picks it up, they take the whole coconut. I don't get the husk back, a major disadvantage.This time got around 1500 coconuts in 3 months. Yield is less after the harsh summer.

Glyricedia Alley Cropping trial

As per Mike Hands Pongamia is best for tropical climate, but wanted to also try with Glyrecedia since there are plenty of planting sticks available. Also one area of the farm, I could see them effectively shading out weeds.

16-July-2019

Planted 8 banana suckers (local poovan variety) by taking pits, put some ash available and pureria cuttings and then planting suckers. At 1.5 feet distance Glyrecedia sticks were planted, width between rows is around 11 feet. Some cowpea seeds were also put around each pit.

Hope Gylrecedia patch will make the area fertile and will provide lot of mulch and shade during summer.