All Set For Plantation !!!

Bed making Phase 2

The bed making starts with  marking of  soil and wetting it properly so that it can be dug according to the size needed ..
Each bed  is 2feet wide and  about a feet and a half  high and   there is a gap of 1 ft  walking distance ..

Water  was  one of the  biggest hurdle here.. we needed soo much of water  suddenly and  we were not informed of it  before the workers from pune landed.. so   we had to rush in and  search for water tankers to  get water from the near by water sources .. awwwww.. it was such a pain ...  power cuts .. machines problems .. pipe line problems ..   ..if only i knew it earlier would have been  a lot easier in arranging for the water ..

anyways  it was  delay  by two days due to the  water issue.  then the work started off..  bed making starts with marking and digging up the soil and  making  beds...  regular  wetting with piper  while working was  very  important ..   a plank was used to finish the borders neat and in shape...

It will take another  2 days  more for the beds to be ready i guess and then the drip line will be added to it ...

if see closely the foggers are also  connected in half of the farm  in the meanwhile when the water issue was going on .. anyways it will be continued  after bed making and  will post more pics of them laters.,,,

Bed making stage 1

Making of beds is one of the important steps in a achieving a good crop. As mentioned in the previous posts, the vermicompost, rice husk and soil have been throughly mixed and rotovated with a blade so that it pulverised and mixed properly.
Then the whole of the farm is made wet with excess of water and  then let it come back to the Vapsa condition. After the  vapsa condition is  brought back it is rotovated with a tiller one last time  and   then the soil is ready for bed making .....

Layering with Vermicompost and Rice Husk ..

The top layer of the soil bed  is now being filled with Vermicompost and then with a fine layer of husk.


Ideally  we need to take about 35% of bed with vermicompost or FYM..... 55-60%  red soil   4kg/m2 rice husk and   about 5%  sand if  soil is not very loose.!!

we used about 100tonnes of  vermicompost  and  it has been a very labor intensive process to get it from the company. Though we used so much it  just did not  make  even a good size layer at least.  Nvertheless i will add a lil more  after plantation directly on the bed.

then i got couple of trucks of rice husk from a rice mill near by and got it dumped inside.. will have to layer it out with a dozer  tomorrow or so .

First the soil is to be layered .. properly..

Vermicompost dumped in random

vermicompost tends to dry up very soon.. so its better to water it once in awhile until its mixed up with soil.

Husk  layered on the right side..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water Tank -trial run

Finally after the plastering work was done, we started filling the tank to check if there were any leaks .. and also the tank should be filled and left aside  for a couple of days.

After another week, the water will be removed and the roof work for this tank should be started..

Soil filling and the levelling works on the go !!

The soil filling was  done after  all the rocks were unearthed and pushed out with a JCB  and then  we had to pump in about 160 truck loads of red soil from another village nearby. The soil quality was  good and  we had to pay about 1300rupees for each  truck load... i know thats  lot of money for soil but then soil is the most important thing for the well being of the plants .. so i didnt want to compromise on this one ..or .even in the next step in soil preparation which is adding FYM or Vermicompost.  we will be adding  vermicompost today or tomorrow on this soil .. i am thinking of adding about 10 -12 tonnes of it

Water works - Tank/ sump construction.

We dug a pit with  a JCB with a size  with  capacity of about  60000 litres  but the place dimension went a little odd and we extended the length and  decreased width and increased  height. This was the  result of the digging.

side view of the  tank pit

After the intial filling with cement  and large sized gravel on the floor the walls work started off..

I thought it would be a quick one or two days of work .. but it went on and on and on..

Finally we ended with the tank size of 26feet length  11 feet  width and  10feet  height.

adding the supporting bars to give it the  capability of such a heavy load of water.  i guess it will be done in another few days after the plastering work is done. Then they will start the roofing work which is another  huge thing.. its almost like building a huge room with reinforced concrete!

Almost finished greenhouse structure on the outside