Ever since the rubber trees were chopped off in March 2019, the land has gradually been taken over by weeds and tall brush, to the extent that it resembles a forest. Wild pigs have visited the plot couple of times and uprooted one of the Jamun saplings.
My plan was to clear off the 1.5 acres of the brush and to plant about 50 coconut and nutmeg trees before the advent of monsoon in 2020. To this purpose, I had my hired help, Regi clear out one plot of about 100 square metres of the brush. All the cleared brush was heaped in the center of the plot on 10th Nov 2019. The problem was on tilling the land of about 300 sq. m. Doing it manually would take days and days of labor. Regi suggested using machinery to get it done in a single day.
Then as I traversed through multiple youtube videos and the web, I discovered Masanabo Fukuoka’s One-Straw Revolution, Charles Dowding’s No-Dig Gardening, Subhash Palekar’s Zero Budget Natural Farming.
No-Dig Gardening appealed to me immediately and I realized that if I could farm my land without tilling, I could save lots of input costs. The current problem of the brush growing up and taking over the land now has become a solution as it gives much-needed mulch that would enrich the soil. By using the brush as mulch, I can prevent the weeds from coming up. After 3 -4 layers of mulch spread over a year, the soil would become enriched and I can plan for bringing up vegetables and fruit trees. The missing component is Jeevamrutam as I need to find out from where I can get the required cow dung and urine of a native cow species. I see an option to buy it online from Amazon, but not sure how effective that would be, because the guidelines say that the stuff should be used up in 7 days.
Six months seems a very long time to come back to this site. I visited the farm every alternate weekend in January and February and kept cutting the brush and spreading it as mulch. It was very dry and hot and I didn’t have the stamina to work for more than an hour in a day. Even with such a limited exertion, I would have a splitting headache by evening. But it was lovely to sit on the grass after work, surrounded by thousands of buzzing bees sucking nectar out of wildflowers. Given the scale of the undergrowth in 3.5 acres, my attempts were only scratching the surface of the wild bush.
I had planned to have a fair bit of land mulched and ready for planting after the summer showers in April or May. This year, we had great summer showers and the climate was ready for my plans. But coronavirus shut us all down. I had to stay off the farm for 2.5 months. This was a trying time for my patience and I had to console myself with tending to my tiny terrace garden. All this time, I kept up on my reading of books by Joel Salatin, Toby Hemenway, Sepp Holzer and David Montgomery.
The week after the Kerala Government relaxed the norms for inter-district travel, I think it was on 10th May 2020, we went to my in-laws place in Pampady Kottayam and thereafter to the farm. The brush had grown more densely and I could see small trees emerging, as per the pattern of succession mentioned in Permaculture. But I was happy to see the tiny plot that I had mulched was still clear of brush, there were only a handful of weeds that cropped up. 30 minutes of hand weeding took care of that.
I realized that spending 2-3 hours every week to clear the brush and mulch the farm would mean that I would need many years to complete the task. I decided to entrust the work to my neighbor Reji who works as hired help.
I called Reji over and explained the concepts to him. I didn’t want to till the land, just mulch it in a pattern that would permit keyhole paths. I asked him to scrape off the soil from the paths and spread it over the mulched beds, creating a semi-raised bed. I provided these instructions during my visit on 24th May 2020.
Now, it was time to plan for what to plant. I visited the Krishi Business Kendra by Village and Fruit Promotion Council of Kerala at Kakkanad to buy seeds. This is an establishment set up by the Government of Kerala. They sell seeds, seedlings, organic fertilisers, mycorrhizal bacteria / fungi and other aids to farming. The prices are very reasonable. I purchased multiple seed packets of okra, chillies, ash gourd, pumpkin, bitter gourd, amaranth, snake gourd and cowpeas.
I had moderate success with okra in my Terrace garden at Thevekkal. I used some of the seeds from my plants and had sprouted some okra seedlings. I transplanted these on 6th June 2020 on one of the raised beds.
I have asked Reji to plant all the seeds and start clearing off more of the brush. I plan to keep extending the cultivated zone slowly with a long term plan of having the entire 3.5 acres up and running with vegetables and myriad flower and fruit trees in the next 4 years.
I tried to improve on the beds that Reji had created. He created them in parallel rows with space for pathways in between. I tried to dig the path a bit deeper so as to create a trench. This will help in draining excess water from the bed to the trench and the rainwater gets more time to infiltrate into the ground. I hope this helps to retain moisture in the soil as I intend to farm with only rainfed water and no additional irrigation.
I also tried to shape 2 keyholes in the bed to minimize the waste of bed space.
