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/.
J-33 Plant-4
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
4 months old variety
6 months old variety
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
Trying out alley cropping using mexican sunflower in one part of the farm which was not used at all. Recently a big tree was cut from here and hence has good sunlight in this area. Has to have a clear plan of when to cut and mulch the mexican sunflower and when to grow the crops. Ideally with rain, we should be able to plant and before that cut mulch should be decomposed to some state so that land is fertile, timing has to be worked out.
Ash gourd is a crop which climbs easily to terrace from ground and produce lots of vegetables.
Applied home made compost couple of times and cowdung slurry once and watered it regularly in the summer
This year, got good summer rains but monsoon got delayed badly. Some good rains are coming as of June 28th, but only drizzling and one or two good rains before this.
29th May
29th May, field was tilled with rotovator, it took usual 2 hours and 2500/ charged for that, but he comes promptly.
June 28th
On June 28th started sowing seeds in line using the new row marker tool. It has been a month since the field was tilled, but no single grass was there in the field because of lack of rain. When the irrigation water was coming and there were signs of monsoon starting, thought of sowing seeds. Even if the rain is delayed, irrigation water will make the field wet enough for the seeds to germinate.
Had 2 para (16Kg) of seeds which was presoaked in cowdung water for 12 hours and used for sowing. The seed type if kunjukunju and it was from last monsoon season harvest.
It took 3 ladies and 1 man two days to complete the sowing. On the 1st day around 75% was done and hence probably 4 ladies and 1 man on a single day can complete the sowing. Initially all the ladies were sowing seeds and covering it with soil, this looked to be inefficient and hence asked two of them to put seeds and one to keep covering it with soil. Covering seeds with soil was done using Fokin's hoe. Row marker accumulate the dried grass and hence gets clogged and does not move. One suggestion is to raise the height of the marker and also pointed edge has to become more horizontal.
07-July-2022
