It has not rained for a couple of days so after some persuasion from Manak Bhaiya, we started to pick up some saplings to plant in the Pratham farm. There are warnings of rain tomorrow, but we'll see what happens. Manak bhaiya feels that this is the season where a plant extracts maximum growth, so it's better we plant now.
Act 1 - Buying plants
We started off to Sehrawat Nursery in 📍Palla Bhaktawarpur which is one of Manak bhaiya's known people to pick up some plants.
We first went to see the Guava. He had 4 varieties:
- The L49 which is supposedly the best variety and gives big fruit
- There's a variety suited for an orchard
- There was one for a black Guava (Yea! It's a red fruit from inside)
- One other variety which I don't remember
We picked a total of 12 Guava plants. 2 black Guava and 10 mixed varieties. (Should check on which ones we picked on)
Next we went for Chiku as that was the other big tree we wanted to plant. He had 2 varieties - a smaller tree (Rs 80) and a bigger one (Rs 280). He said both are good ones and recommended. We took 5 of the bigger one as Manak bhaiya felt these will atleast show in the farm.
After chiku, we picked up 10 [[Lemon#Kagzi Nimbu | Kaagzi Nimbu]] plants. Some of them even had small lemons on them (to attract customers I'm sure). But we wanted to pick up. He also had another lemon plant which produces oblong fruits, but we just went with one variety for this one now.
Last but not the least, came the turn for Mango. He had a new lot come in which he seemed very confident about. He did not know the variety (later on, Vijay and his wife told us that all the plants were dussheri), but said they would start producing fruit next year but we are to only take 1-2 fruits per plant to not hinder the growth of the tree.
The tree which was about 4ft in height was fairly expensive (Rs 600 per plant) and while I was hesitant in getting more trees, Dad gave me confidence and we ended up picking 10 plants (We ended up getting 2 more as someone didn't want it when we bought those 2 for him). What was unique was that the root ball was quite small in comparison to the main shoot which was worrisome to me. Sehrawat uncle mentioned that these are grown keeping the root restricted inside a plastic breathable bag of sorts (which was still attached to the root ball) to make sure they can be transported easily.
We also roamed about his nursery which is extremely peaceful and also got to taste raw kamrak straight off the tree. It's extremely sour, but was worth the big bite I took. He also gave us a kilo of amra / ambad from a tree. It's like a small mango used for pickles.
In summary, these are the plants we ended up picking with these prices:
| Plant | Quantity | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Mango | 12 | 600 |
| Chiku | 5 | 200 |
| Lemon | 10 | 100 |
| Guava | 12 | 150 |
| Total | 39 | 11000 |
([[2020-07-25 (sat)#The case of the 2 missing plants| This got changed as we missed 2 plants somewhere]])
While a tempo would have costed us another 1000 bucks, the uncle said that we could get all these plants in our car itself. So we packed the plants in the trunk and the back seat and started our journey towards the farm.
Vijay's wife was also going to help out with planting today so she and Vijay transported the plants to the farm in a hand rickshaw.
Act 2 - Planting
The Jeevamrit and Bijamrit had been prepared a week back and were waiting for us in 2 large blue drums on the farm. The work on the tank was almost complete and the cow shed also had the basic structure ready. The eating area for the cows was built, and the sides had been erected.
The farm itself was bustling with a variety of weeds that had grown along with the jowar that had been planted previously. Most notable was Dhaincha which was growing to good heights.
Manak bhaiya told us that the right & bottom sides of the farm are slightly higher than the rest of the farm, so the plan was to start from that end as the water would recede first from those areas.
- [ ] TBD - Maybe draw a picture to show what left / right means and how the farm looks now?
We decided that we'd plant mangos 40ft apart as per the Palekar multi-layer farming model and dug holes for our plants right next to the Khaal(which is a colloquial word for trench). In the middle of each 40x40 block we were to plant a Guava tree and then between all mango plants, one lemon in the row and column.
A block looks something like this now
| 20ft | 20ft | |
|---|---|---|
| M | L | M |
| L | G | L |
| M | L | M |
Planting process
- We carried Jeevamrit and Bijamrit in 2 buckets for easy use. We also had a half cut bottle to pour JA.
- We dig a hole (next to the khaal) slightly deeper than needed and then crumble the soil in the pit to make it slightly easy for the roots to penetrate.
- Spread about 200ml of JA in the soil area in the pit
- Dip the plants root ball in BA and placed it in the pit
- Covered the pit with soil from the neighbouring area and when it covered the rootball, pressed it slightly to compact the soil to avoid water filling in and also to make the plant firm. We took care to not overdo the soil compaction.
- We put some more soil on top to form a slight mound around the plant's main trunk so that water can run off from the plant and not accumulate.
- We poured some more JA on perimeter of the plant.
- We spread some grass, dhanicha etc from around the same area to cover the soil where we'd planted.
💡Vijay's wife told us that the Mango variety was Dussheri which she could immediately identify looking at the leaves and the plant. Wish I can get to this stage sometime.
💡For Guava, she asked us to look for plants with a good spread and not necessarily a tall plant as that will grow fast and also not fall down in with the wind.