Methodology for assured calculated yields

Planting a sapling:

Choose a banana sucker for planting, weighing at least 600gms – 800gms

Choose a rhizome that has its first leaves like a sword and not flat.

Old roots should be cleaned and cut.

They should be soaked in Amrut Jal( Provide hyper link ) for 5 minutes.

They are smeared with wood ash and planted initially on bed of 20 ltrs Amrut Mitti (Provide hyper link) which is 9 inches high.

Observe the growth of banana carefully. Keep adding 20 ltrs of Amrut Mitti every month up to 5 months.

Keep making notes of

o Appearance and size of new leaves.

o Size of matured leaves (length and breadth after it is fully spread) date wise.

o Time table of addition of Amrut Mitti

o Height of stem

o Girth of stem

o Appearance of the flower.

o Conversion of flower into fruit

o Maturity of fruit and harvest time.

U will observe that it takes ten days for a new banana leaf to grow. Therefore in a month banana plant will have 3 new leaves. The life of every leaf is 5 months.

First few leaves are 1 sq ft area. Then as regular growth starts every new leaf is one and half or double the size of previous leaf. Maximum size of leaves is achieved before 4 months.

If you find this isn’t happening, look for reasons.

(less Amrut Mitti, less/more watering, etc… )

This goes on for 5 months.

So at end of 5th month, a healthy banana plant growing in 100 ltrs of Amrut Mitti has 15 matured leaves having canopy of about 25 sq ft area.

The life of each leaf is 5 months, hence after every 5th month 3 leaves die and 3 new leaves emerge.

Here onwards, every new leaf is of same size as the earlier leaf. And as one new leaf unfurls, the first leaf dries up to fall.

Never cut the leaves of banana plant before it dies on its own. While dying most of nutrients are sent back to mother plant for use for new growth or storage.

Formation of fruit:

Short duration plant gives fruit in 13 months and long duration plant in 18 months.

It is essential that the plant has all the 15 leaves from 5^th month onwards or it does not produce optimum yield.

From 5^th month onwards till the plant starts flowering the girth of the plant must go on increasing.

Normally we see lot of suckers of new plants growing around the plant. These should be cut and shifted to the nursery.

Only the sucker which grows in the seventh month; two months prior to flowering should be retained there. Suckers appearing after seventh month should also be shifted to the nursery.

When the plant is 5-6 (depending on variety) months old, the flowering process is complete within the plant

Half ltr of ash should be provided to the plant when it is 5 months old.

Harvesting Record yield:

Area of canopy of a matured plant is 25 sq ft.

On every sq ft area in India 3 gm/sq ft dry weight is produced.( add hyper link)

Out of this one gram is utilized by plant for its metabolism and two gms goes towards storage.

Out of these two gms one gm goes towards growth of roots, stem, leaves, etc…and one grm goes towards formation of fruit.

Now during childhood and old age of the plant ( pl refer to appendix for explanation ) no photosynthesis takes place.

Out of the life span of 13 months the plant is photosynthetically active for 10 months; after deducting three months of its childhood phase.

Now 2 grm / day of dry weight / sq ft area is utilized by plant for growth

ie: 2x25 sq ft = 50 gms/day

ie: 50 x 30 = 1500 gms / month

ie: 1500 x 10 = 15000 gms for ten months

= 15 kgs.

Now 50% of 15 kgs ie say 8 kgs will go towards formation of leaves, stem roots etc… a

And remaining 7 kgs will go towards fruit building.

Water content in fruit = 7x3times water= 21 kgs

So 7 + 21 = 28 kgs of total weight fruit can be harvested.

Add to it the weight of stem on which banana grows is 7 kgs.

So Total weight is 35 kgs.

Post harvest care

Post harvest the stem of banana plant should be cut, keeping one and half feet from the base. This provides nutrition to the baby plant.

The cut stem should be chopped in pieces and left on surface of mulch surrounding the small sapling, so that it decomposes and adds nutrition to growing plant

Monsoon Magic

The most crowded of cities can boast of green jewels and oasis in these concrete, man made deserts. And with onset of monsoons we see nature weave its magical spell on all its earthlings.

Fruits on terrace !

Star fruit

A bumper harvest on this little tree which is one year old.

These are a plenty too!

Chikoo ( Sapota) sweet like sugar!

The chikoo tree eight years old now.

Guava, Custard apple, Pomegranate, Star fruit

are some of the fruit trees one can easily grow on the terrace.

Please refer to the procedure for planting a sapling in Amrut Mitti in a container/basket here.

Now once planted in containers filled with Amrut Mitti following precautions should be taken.

Avoid over watering.

Care should be taken to see that we don't over water. Amrut Mitti has excellent water holding capacity and therefore, it is important to ensure that soil is moist and not wet.When saplings mature into trees, and Amrut Mitti is also 5-6 years old, we need to follow nature's cycle and monitor the watering accordingly.

Trees drop their leaves in winter and autumn. So be it on our farms. STOP WATERING. The Amrut Mitti harvests dew and takes up water for its needs from the atmosphere.

When grown from a graft

The saplings if grown from a grafted plant start giving fruits at an early date. As early as 8 - 10 months. It is important to understand that in case of grafted plants, the age of the plant from which it is grafted becomes the age of the sapling. And so the lifespan of these trees is also less.

Add Amrut Mitti proportionately to growth of canopy.

When saplings grow in Amrut Mitti, there is excellent growth of feeder root resulting in healthy canopy of plants. The volume of Amrut Mitti reduces with time and therefore it is important to keep adding doses of Amrut mitti in the container and mulch with sugarcane bagasse. Normaly the requirement of Amrut Mitti is 4 ltrs /sq ft of canopy of plant.

Pruning

Prune from time to time to maintain an umbrella shape. You can see from the pictures above that the fruit trees at MbPT terrace farm are now quite matured. In the beginning of summer, prune your trees if necessary. On a city farm, we need to keep the height of trees restricted to the level, where we can reach the highest point easily.

In case of guava plant check growth of branches on main branch, secondary branch and tertiary branch. In the secondary branch allow growth of leaves up to 10 nodes only. Beyond 10th node the plant will have only vegetative growth and there will be no fruit. Fruits will appear only between second and fourth node. So prune the stem at the 10th node. Pruning here will result in the sprouting of two more branches at this point. This helps in increasing canopy. Increased canopy results in increase in photosynthesis, and increase storage of food in stem. Same with the Custard apple tree. Results of pruning are that you will see fruits almost on every node of stem. :)

One can visualize that in nature , a herbivorous animal like goat will eat the lower branches which it can easily reach. The top branches, but those on the periphery were eaten by elephants, giraffe etc...Thus in nature pruning was done by animals ) However we do not have goats and other animals to do this job and therefore have to undertake it ourselves. The fallen leaves and the ones pruned should return back to our soil. Ensure that greens are not added directly in touch with soil, but on top of mulch. (In nature the greens eaten by animals, return to the soil through their dung! )

Now after the leaves have fallen ,and trees start storing food in stems. As summer progresses you will see fresh new leaves sprouting, along with flush of buds of fruits. More the stored food in stem, more the yield of fruit. Again .. water very moderately if not at all.....All this time, keenly check soil conditions for moisture till you get used to the results of Amrut Mitti.

Blooms of safed jaam

Tiny safed jaam

Be blessed with abundant fruit! For yourself... for the birds and the bees.....and the insects!

Banana

Banana looks beautiful and yields abundant,sweet, nutritious fruit for a family!

Till about a year ago, we grew banana in half cut drums/containers filled with Amrut Mitti by following the regular Natueco method of planting a sapling.We got a yield of about 20 kgs of banana as against an yield of 35 kgs in Amrut Mitti heap on land.

The first plant gave us a good yield. The second and third subsequently kept giving reduced yields. It also became difficult to loosen the soil in the drum/container, as it kept getting compacted with the roots.

We therefore experimented, by growing directly on the slab. A bed of eight inches of Amrut Mitti was all that we needed to make a start.As the plant grew taller and taller we gave it an external support with bamboo.

Red Banana grown directly on a slab supported by bamboo

Soon we were overjoyed to see the red flower making an entry into this world!. So exotic... we had never seen one before! This particular variety was gifted by a friend from Kerela.


How the plant has grown! It towered over all of us. It is one of the tallest banana that has grown on the terrace. So it was not surprising that the Amrut mitti that is was growing in fell a little short of the required quantity compared to its canopy. However as we did not have have stock of more mitti plant had to do with meager resources.

The tiny red flowers have now grown into delightful red bananas! We are waiting to harvest and eat them!

We harvested 8 kgs of Red Banana. As I said, due to lack of Amrut Mitti to suit its growing size the plant made good of whatever we gave it, and blessed us with this amazing fruit!

Growing rice on the Terrace

Rice grown on bed of 8 inches Amrut Mitti mulched with sugarcane bagasse

It is said that to grow rice one needs to flood the feilds with water. How do we know? We in Mumbai have never seen rice feilds leave alone know whether the feild needs to be flooded or not.So we started our experiment to grow rice on a terrace!
And we succeeded! The lush green grass swaying in the stong wind filled our hearts with joy. We can only imagine the joy the farmers must feel while they watch the fruits of their hard labour in open feilds.

Well it is possible to feel this joy in urban areas too......
We are now watching the wonders of this crop drying , the rush of birds to feed on this crop, and our gardeners shooing them away, possesively gaurding their treasure!

Let us wait and watch the final yeild that we get... Patience! Patience!

After a month

Just as we were to harvest the rice .....On Dassehra day it rained cats and dogs in Mumbai......It poured......! My heart sank. It was a holiday and our kitchen was closed. The rice was all wet!

I deeply felt the pain of all the farmers who work so hard in the feilds and are faced with hardships in case of such calamities beyond their control.For us urbanites these calamities dont even cause a flutter. We only realise their impact when the prices of food touches the skies and we crib about them.All we do then is to blame the government in power.

The next day when we went on the terrace.....we realised there had been a party ! By Rats! They had eaten away the rice which was scattered all over the place......

WE SHOULD HAVE HARVESTED IT ON TIME ! A LESSON WELL LEARNT!

In spite of this all we did not have the heart to cut away the remaining parts so we retained the plants. In a few days there were new shoots which sprouted! But the root growth was not vigourous and we decided to cut away what was remaining. After the rats party what remained was about 50 gms.....

More than three times had been eaten away by them. So we can assume that about 150 gms of rice was cultivated in a bed of Amrut Mitti measuring 1.5 ft * 3 ft * 8 inch ht .

NOW WE HAVE DECIDED TO START ALL OVER AGAIN WITH A WINTER CROP ON A BIGGER BED....... : ) WILL GET BACK WITH RESULTS.........

City Farming Workshop on 27th Sept 09

With the threat of Global Warming, the poison in our food, the decline in contact with Nature and rising stress levels, city farms have become the need of the day. If left to itself Nature will not leave a stone unturned in greening every inch of space. The bright green wild weeds growing even in the small spaces, nooks and corners: above our bus stops shelters, corners of the road are a testimony to this. Nature shows us the way and Natueco connects us to nature. So dear friends register for the workshop and take the initiative to create a city farm in your area. You will not only be rewarded with the sweet fruits of your labour but will also inspire and lead others. Register and participate in a workshop on 27th September 09 at Maharashtra Nature Park from 9.00 am to 4.00 pm.
For registration contact :
Suresh Paranjpe at sureshparanjpe@yahoo.com
Contact No: 9930440286 OR
Jyoti Bhave at bhave0709@gmail.com Contact No : 9819444905

View Photos of workshop here : http://picasaweb.google.co.in/preetisunil/HowToInitiateYourNatuecoCityFarmAWorkshopHeldByURBANLEAVESAtMNPOn27thSept2009?feat=directlink