Paddy cultivation

Last year I had written a detailed post about paddy cultivation. This year also we did almost the same - with one change. Decided to bring some old technologies. Brought in Bangarappa's (our farm neighbour and farm helper) traditional skills and his animals for ploughing the field. It is lot of hard work both for human and the animals. But it is far less destructive compared to machines - they burn so much fossil fuel, throw lot of carbon into the air and also over-till the ground damaging the soil biology.

Last year I had borrowed seeds from Bangarappa. I did completely natural farming - I did not use chemicals and fertilisers of any kind. My crop had got some diseases. Plants resisted diseases and grew well. I got one generation of seeds grown without chemicals. Hopefully this year they will improve further in disease resistance and adaptation to local environment.

I should have treated seeds with biological agents like pseudomonas. My bad - I missed it because of my bad planning. I will for sure do it in the next season. I have to wait for one more year for that though :-(

We sowed seeds on 30-Jun. Saplings were transplanted on 16-Jun. We ran out of saplings though because of a minor mistake. Our saplings were little younger than the usual age transplanting. Transplanting workers did not consider that. They planted usual thickness of plants - ending up planting one or two extra samplings in each group. Because of that we ran out of saplings when one small terrace was still to be planted. Thanks to Bangarappa - he borrowed some saplings from another farmer who had some excess saplings and completed the job.

Will keep you posted about how it goes this year.