Organic Fire: Farm Visit

Spotted few birds while visiting the paddy fields. Looks like the black one had its wings spread out to dry its feathers.

Now the paddy seeds are showing up here and there. These were sown in August.

Headed back to the orchard farm

Been giving a few trees compost tea from last 2 weeks. I see some new growth, the light green leaves. If i find the response well, i plan to give this compost tea to all the other trees which are not well established.
Compost tea - Good compost, which smells sweet is diluted in water and allowed to rest for 24 - 48 hrs. I aerate the tea using a mug or cup; fill and pour back the tea so that bubbles are seen on the surface. People who have mixed coffee using 2 cups know this better.

This a Melia dubia tree, which is a type of neem tree, which grows straight up and is a timber gaining importance due to its quick growth, draught tolerant, leaves favoured by sheep and goats and use in plywood industry.
This is also an import tree to form a forest like canopy, highest one, read along this article for more Accelerating Succession and Evolution.
Although i started the orchard 3 years back. We were not successful getting a good water resource here and the rains are pretty low here, so we irrigate through drip and canal water. We have lost few fruit trees due to this. So i decided to add in more tall trees so that they would help out young fruit trees.I have planted one Melia dubia tree in the centre of 4 fruit trees.

I sowed few long green brinjal (eggplant) seedlings. I have sown them in intensive planting sowing style, wherein the seedling are sown closely and they form a triangular pattern. This pattern allows for more sowing in a small space and plants shade the soil, helping to slow down water evaporation.

This compost was created using hot compost method Hot Composting.

Although it was expected to compost in 3 weeks, it took almost 10 weeks to get to this. In the initial days the moisture seemed more to me and also the greens that were added were not sufficient enough i guess. I will try this out again and post.
Earlier i used to source farm yard compost, so creating our own compost would be good savings.
The carbon used for composting was the paddy straw from our paddy harvest and the Nitrogen was the vegetable crop remains and weeds.

This is a annual weed that is pretty much everywhere in the farm. we are removing these by uprooting, chop and drop does not seem good here as even a little stem left behind would bring back the plant. So we plan to keep the ground covered with a native grass and few others, which grows to a height of less than a feet. This also serves as a good ground cover.

This is nitrogen fixing lentil plant, planted along the sides of fruit trees. This is a successful plant in our farm, less water hungry and last for 7 to 8 months unlike other cover crops like horse gram and cow peas which last for only 3 to 4 months.

Visited our other Areca nut farm, a pretty old farm, 35 years old.