Hello dear friends, it has been good days again after our weekend.
I hope everyone is in good health and happiness, well I wish everyone the best of luck painting this week.
On this beautiful day, I want to share with you my activities in the garden from the past weekend. The last time I wrote to the community was when it didn't rain I had to wet the garden with long pipe water to help the green plant live through the drought. However, it has been raining for a few days, and we have to use the advantages of soft soil to grow new plants.
Note: There are two things you can learn from this post: First, you will know the importance of tillage and you will learn how to plant a yam, protect the yam from sun damage in a mixed weather
When it is a new season to plant a new crop, we usually till the soil, we do this to control weeds, mix the organic matter of the soil or loosen the soil before planting. The benefit of this is that phosphorus and nitrogen are passed on to improve soil health. If the soil is well aerated, oxygen and water can easily reach the roots of the plants.
How to tilling the soil with a hoe
Apart from a rototiller used somewhere in America and a large farm in Africa, hoeing is the common method used in Nigeria. I remember during my year of service in Cross River State in Nigeria, tilling is 20 naira. If you have a big farm that needs 10,000 piles, that means you have to pay the workers a sum of 200,000 in naira ($300). Let's appreciate our farmers, it is not easy to feed the nation.
Hoeing method of tilling.
Cutting the grass that will likely going to slows down the process, although it is not necessary that it is well cleared, but clearing a space for tilling is fine.
Remove the large stones and other hard substances such as large roots that can damage the iron part of the hoe.
Break the hard part of the soil, at that point the soil will be easy to pack closer to where you want your heap.
Short-handed hoe is good for gathering heaps
The reason we are having heap to plant yams is because they are root crops that do not require strength to harvest. Some have made a bed heap, but the most common in Nigeria is the one shown above. It allows yams to grow well in the soil and makes harvesting easy.
Planting process
After making a lot of heaps, one of my brothers already cut the yam we wanted to plant into several sizes, and another put the yam on the heap for planting.
Yam planting
Stack the dry leaves after planting to prevent the sun from damaging the yam before it begins to sprout.
I believe in next few weeks when the yam start growing, the next things is to bury a peg that will hold the yam stem.
To everyone reading this, please take the advantage of any empty land in your household to grow some plant, it is time to start farming again. This will really go a long way in this economy situation where food is costly everyday, buying a goods in the market now become a gold. Planting will help many household to save more cash, it will help an individual to have right to fresh food from the source.
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