Eating is an agricultural act - Wendell Berry

Saturday, September 18, 2010

ragi - update

we planted the nursery in late april.
we transplanted in mid may.
read the planting story here.

we had inter-planted with karamani/cow pea and had a blast with it.

as on date we are almost 150 days from the start.
and here is the field as of date. it is lusher with weeds than it is with ragi. and that is because we transplanted with a 9 inch spacing. nevertheless the field is lush and beautiful.


close ups of the 'ears'.

while harvesting, we shall only cut these ears.
then we shall broadcast some green manure seeds (see point 5 in this post)
once they sprout, we are planning to sickle down the entire field and lay the grass/stalks/weeds right there as mulch. this will ensure that the field is fully covered and regains its fertility over the 2 months leading upto the next planting season.

we expect to harvest in 3-4 installments - we do not have an uniformity in grain maturing on the stalks.
in another month you should read our harvest and post-harvest processing.

7 comments:

Vanessa said...

Beautiful

csm said...

thanks v.
been awfully quiet these days?

Vanessa said...

Am I? Hmm.. may be you are right.
That doesn't mean I don't read your posts. Just that I don't have a say on many of them.

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Chandra R said...

Dear Sir/Madam, I am a researcher writing a paper on the origins of the finger-millet grain. I would like to reproduce the photo of the fingermillet head in this post in my paper. Request your kind permission.

This is the photograph I am referring to:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GE39CVDDJIU/TJRbR6D1_bI/AAAAAAAABzk/EdpqRDxMY6w/s1600/ragi+full+3.JPG

I can provide a citation with a link to your blog. I can also include a name if you like. Please let me know. Thank you.

csm said...

sure chandra. just a link to the blog is fine.

Chandra R said...

thank you csm.