Eating is an agricultural act - Wendell Berry

Saturday, April 02, 2011

ragi - take 2 - record produce

ragi - take 2 was a short duration (90 days) version called kulla kevaru.

the major differences from the previous planting were:
1. closer spacing - approx 6" between the saplings.
2. no inter-crop - last time we used cow pea - karamani.
3. and of course - the seed variety is a 90 day crop

all of it seem to have worked.

when we cut and piled up the stalks, we looked at it with some scepticism and were expecting a sub-10 kg level produce.
but our jaws dropped when the scales tilted at 18 kgs.

the fertility improvement continues in this field which is approaching fukuoka.

5 comments:

madhavi said...

congrats - sriram how much area of land was ragi planted ? or rather my question is how much will an acre yeild - now camparing chemical vs organic then we have some good data for this restoration initiative. you probably are already doing this.
madhavi

csm said...

around 1500 sq feet.
extrapolating, we would have got around 550 kgs in an acre.
unable to get any accurate yield from locals.
i think ragi is too cheap for anything other than non-pesticide farming.

nisha said...

awesome! your food security is ensured :)

Surio said...

Sriram,
Congratulations first and foremost.

Now, another question. Did not DV attend some permaculture course some time in the past? I am surprised he didn't have some ideas about companion // planting schemes to salvage an earlier crop failure that you wrote about some time back?

csm said...

thanks surio.
ref: earlier failure was not something that companion planting etc., could have salvaged.
and DV spent most of his attention on the rain-water harvesting sessions :-)