The Groundnut Story

The Start

Its last week of July and everyone around us is growing Groundnuts. Most of them have already planted. Our planning is going on slow. We don’t want to take any steps that we have to undo later. We have not been farmers traditionally. We don’t know farming. Its a vision of growing Good Food that has got us in the field. We have a lot of land laying fallow. The land will receive rainfall and there will be so many weeds. Why not we also plant groundnut! As an experiment. Maybe we’ll learn a thing or two about farming. And off course we will do it without chemicals.

So we decide to plant Groundnut on around 2.7 Acres of land in the East end of the Poorti Farm. It is going to be an experiment. We don’t know if our plants will survive without chemicals. We will try to learn and keep pace with organic practices to fight pests and to fertilize the soil. Farm doesn’t have biodiversity as yet. So, we don’t have a reason to feel that there would be no pests. We really don’t know how it is going to be. But we are ready for it.

So we prepare the land. We get the seeds. We sow the seeds. We put pipes for irrigation. 31st July we plant our seeds. We are a bit late, but anyway, we are there.

Yellowing of Leaves

So around 17 DAS (days after sowing) we figure out that some plants in particular patch are getting yellow leaves. First response is to upload the photo on Claude and ask, It tells something technical. Little difficult to understand. So we take the known best route, ask our neighbours. They tell us in simple words, you have given more water to the plants. We tell the same to Claude. Claude agrees. It tells that what it was telling is correct and the same has been triggered by excess of water. Another confirming factor is that this area is little low lying and more susceptible for water collection.

We take the corrective step. No more watering for some days. The leaves get back green. Such a relief!

However, we are thinking what more we can do. We take advice from some members of a permaculture group. We get some detailed advice what to do to grow groundnut organically.

So right now we are making Jeevamrit. Will create another post for the same and keep you updated.

Thanks for reading and Good Day.