Tuesday 14 April 2015

We've hit GOLD!!




Allow me to explain the euphoric title :)

This month we harvested our first season of turmeric. We harvested 400kg wet rhizome from 4 gunthas (4000 sq feet). We are still in the process of building our soil and haven't seen encouraging growth so far ... we hadn't harvested any crop over 100kg so far ... so you can imagine our sense of achievement with this :)






We had planted about 50kg of seed. Part of it was planted on ridges while part of it was on flat ground. Rows were 18" apart and we planted at 9" spacing within the row. We had applied cowdung, though we had not been able to mulch it.

Stopped watering in mid-Jan. By mid-Feb it was ready for harvest.

Things we missed (and learnt) this year

  • Timing of sowing needs to be right - preferably before the rains start. We should have planted it late May ... instead we planted it in mid July. 
  • We knew we had to do earthing up, but other plantation priorities meant we couldn't devote time to it. It resulted in lesser rhizomes growth.
  • We still need to learn - more labour efficient ways to weed, harvest, post-process.

By conventional chemical farming standards, we should have harvested more than twice this amount! Experience is a good teacher. And we also hope our soil building progresses further.

What next ... Turmeric powder for the kitchen and the first aid kit (not only disinfectant but also great anti-inflammatory), and turmeric pickle ... yumm. Turmeric is a warming spice and so the pickle will be great for the monsoons and winter.

1 comment:

  1. nice article...very simple written
    Very helpful...
    Let us know if we can buy?

    ReplyDelete