The Carnation Unit.

Though i wanted to start both Carnation and Gerbera poly houses at the same time, i was little held back to start  two new things at a time. so now that Gerberas got months older, i have finally finished working on the Carnation greenhouse.  Its a 1200Sq.mt farm and  is located right next to the previous one.
The levelling, soil filling and foundation poles work was all done priorly along with  gerbera unit, the work started and  finished pretty soon. It took about a week to finish the poly house structure and another 2 weeks for filling  vermicompost, cocopeat and rotovating  the soil so that everything mixes up well. Ya, i forgot to mention cocopeat was not a part of my plan in gerberas but in carnations i wanted to add up cocopeat coz i have read that it gives soil a good holding capacity which might be helpful for carnations growth.

Carnations farming is  labourious and thats the reason why there are very few carnations unit around. The most important work being installation of supporting the poles and support mesh and then  working on the plants later on with these meshes obstructing ur reach to the plants for daily work. Even the GI wire mesh is a pain if the size is not  fixed properly u end up having  multiple puntures on ur legs while walking between the beds.
After mixing up of soil bed preparation took about two days and the drip irrigation and fogging system took about another two days. Then the first layer of mesh was installed on the bed. Altogether five such layers will have to be placed so that the stems come up strong and straight.

Since we had a bad experience with the fumigant in gerberas we didnt take any chance and got the best one that was recommeded by KF BIOPLANTS. We used silver colloidal hydrogen peroxide for the disinfection of the soil and  the next day we have planned for the plantation.

we got about 33000 carnation saplings and  we did the plantation in two phases- day one and day two . we did not wanted to hurry like  we did during the gerbera plantation. Altogether we have 6 varieties now.except for the variety named cool all others thrived well.  cool saplings were weak and had lots of mortality in the first week itself.

Site location of the polyhouse for carnation unit.

All materials dumped and the workers busy with segregating the things.

All the foundation poles installed and soil was also  dumped and rotovated  even before these materials came up

It took about a week for them to finish this polyhouse- quick and neat.

A truck load of cocopeat was ordered and here its being unload and transferred into the carnations unit.

cocopeat uniformly spread over the soil

workers dumping the cocopeat and spreading them .

uniformly layered cocopeat and vermicompost and was ready to be mixed up with soil .

After rotovating with a tractor ..we did a second round of mix up with a power tiller ..

Beds ready for plantation in the carnations polyhouse

silver colliodal Hydrogen peroxide being used as a disinfecting agent  for fumagation

Soil disinfection by wetting the beds with  a rose can filled with H2O2.

The first layer of mesh for the support of carnations stems

all set for the plantation of carnations the next day

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Me  trying to resize a mesh which  was alittle more than the length of the bed

Day one after the plantation some carnation varieties were strong as rock and others were so weak.

Healthy Carnation saplings

Tender and fragile carnation saplings- freshly planted and waiting to start a life

An overview of the carnations beds after the full plantation was done

some of the weak  varieties which started troubling from day three onwards

Day three- except for one variety named cool ( the ones that u see here) all other saplings looked happy

Blooms Blooms Blooms !!

I have been waiting to  pictures like these for the past 2 months  ... finally  everything  seems to  look well and  flowering has started  almost  half of the  farm is  blooming now..  look wonderful. Finally , i am at peace  each day when i am  entering the farm.

one more day and i will start sending the flowers to the market . Here are some of the pics of the farm  with all the colors  that started  blooming.  :)     I  am  lovin' it !!!  Parapappa paa  

Finally - healthy and growing plants.

Almost all the diseases have come under control now. Things look lot better than what it was before. Healthy leaves and large leaves are emerging  finally and  i am hoping that there will be a growth spurt in the coming one month to 45 days ..

Since my plants have been under stress for more than one month, there has been very little growth and so what was scheduled as 90days for  1st harvest will now be 120 days.

As long as the plants are  going to do fine .. i am very  ok with it. Once the plants are fully grown and lush green all my tensions will be solved. Anyways there are  few things that i have learned the hard way.

• Never ever give any pesticide sprays in the  afternoons or when the plant is stressed by  high temp, less soil moisture, etc. Its always advisable to spray early  in the morning or late in the evening. 

• Always finish irrigating the plants either with water showers or with drip before 9 am itself. Its like how we need a healthy breakfast  to have a good start in the day, same is with the plants. 

• Fertigation  should be planned properly and used in the right amounts. Always  used  measuring cups  and  weighing  machine to give the exact recomended doses.

• Allow  proper aeration inside the greenhouse .. either open the side curtains fully or install fans.

• Fogging is  a great way to maintain the humidty in the green house. just  2 mins of fogging  once every 2-3 hours will make a great difference in how the plants respond.

• Most important of all, at any point of time when you walk in to the farm, everything should look green and healthy.

The First few flowers

All those plants which are thriving well have started  budding  and   its mandatory that you should remove the buds so that the plants get healthier anyways .. the early flowers that i let grow got  pulled out finally  :)

  No more  flowers  until  another  4 weeks ..  its time for the plants to get stronger and healthier ,.. they are not yet ready  for the babies  :)

The First Gerbera  cuttings going home !!

The First white Gerbera  that was  pretty healthy

The First white Gerbera in the farm to flower !!

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A bunch of young white and orange  Gerberas ,, The First bunch!!

Me and my First  Gerbera  cuttings from the farm.

The Flowers and the Farm !!

50 Days - The good, bad and the worst !!!

 Its been  a roller coaster ride  with  lots of tensions and running arounds  for the past one month or more.  There has been  lots  of unexpected incidents that have made us stand on our toes literally and run around.
 Now i have learnt some  very important things that i should have paid attention to  but did not due to lack of knowledge.  i have not come across such  points anywhere on the net.

1) Rains are the worst enemies  for green house farmer  especially if you have not thought about the levelling of the land and  drainage of  rain water. The land where i constructed my farm  is  a general low lying area and my ill fate was  so bad that i fell sick with kidney problem and was bedridden for a week and the same  time heavy rains  flooded the whole vilages and  becoz of the low lying area .. my farm was the point of slope  for all the  water from upper fields  and the results was  that my farm got flooded and  there was water flowing the walkways .. like its their father's property ...  damn ...!! all i could  do  immediately was to  let them  go out  as soon as possible.. !!   Then had to do the damage control procedures like  making the  drainage channels, making  bunds  from the  main sites where water is flooding inside, channelising the water  to other  side of road etc.

2) Fumigation was such an important step  which  i did not pay personal attention to and  am paying a heavy toll for that now ..  Aniketh irrigation guy did the fumigation with  H2o2  but then it was not done the right way i suppose .. coz i have been facing  lots of issues with soil  related  problems  ..  first i see  some mites   and  i immediately  did a round of chloropyriphos and then it was solved. Then slowly Crown rot and root rot  kind of started emerging ..  the affected plants  looks very today and by tomorow they will wilt and  slowly die off..  all i can do is  feel sad about the  dying plant and continue on with the schedule of  systemic fungicides that were prescribed for the same !!

3) Leaf Miner and Nematode infection  also surfaced  randomly and i pulled off the leaves and  threw them far away from the farm. For the Nematodes neem cake was advised  but raking of the soil has to be done before that and also neem cake  supossedly raises teh soil PH and i did not wanted to try that now  as i did not  find any serious nematode infestation.

4) Since it was rainy season housefly is a very disturbing creature  especially the small juvinile ones which keep running into the eyes.  Sumhow these  like the  plants in my farm and lots and lots of them started to sit on the leaves and  were  troubling me. A round of malathion Spray did the job to some extent and then i had to take care of other problems that are  there in the farm.

5) Calcium chlorosis, Iron chlorosis  deficiency symtoms started flooding in due to the water logged conditions and  then had to supplement them additionally with spray once in a week .

6)Growth Stunting  is the most  serious concern that i am currently facing right now in my gerbera  plants. There has been an attack of Red spider mites and these tend to cause the young leaves to curl and not grow furthur. This is a major stress on the plants and they wont let the Gerbera grow any furthur nor does any new  leaves come in. The plant simply start to stunt and if not taken care of wil eventually  die of slowly.  Spraying of OMITE and Wettable Sulphur alternately once in a week are most effective solution, but even then  the plants take a real  lot of time to come out of the disease and springout new leaves which are healthy.    Hundreds of  plants  are  effected  with this  growth stunting and  Red spider bug some  beds are  worst then what they were intially when planted.

7) The good plants  which have survived well also started showing some weird brown patchy drying up of leaves and  its increasing since yesterday. The KF bioplants People are suposed to come tomorow to do the visit and  do the suggestions .. i am so scared and worried about the farm. Almost tears are rolling in the eyes to see the  plant growth. I have beeen doing soo much of hard work for this  but still things arent going smooth. I dunno if i am immateur and need experience or   its just my ill fate.

The good part about the past 50 days is that   i have started the fertigation schedule  from past one month and it has boosted the  plant growth  in many plants. Increased foliage and lush green color but  this is only in those plants which have not been affected by stunting !!   Some beds look soo very healthy and  green .. if only all the  200 beds were like that ...  i would have been on cloud nine by now ..



The Best part in the whole  bad  situation is that .. After 44 days of plantation the first flower has emerged!!  And what a coincidence it was my Birthday too  :)  it was an orange colored  Gerbera  - Goliath variety.

Soon lot more plants which have recovered from stunting and  started growing in the past few weeks have started pushing out buds .. Orange followed by  whites .. then yellows and  red buds are  just coming up .. !!