Hello Hive

It is a good thing that the rains are a bit more consistent now which is what we have been waiting for to carry out some of our farm activities.

Gradually we have stated weeding grasses off our rice farm and for this part of the farm we decided to do a manual weeding instead of applying chemicals. The rice are already at their fertilization and seed bearing stage. It is a very critical stage to be mindful of if we want to apply chemicals. Once rice grains are pregnant like this a term my mum will often call it, it is not advisable to add herbicides to it again.

Herbicides often cause a minor drawback for plant each time they are applied except we get lucky to find a very much selective herbicides that will selectively kill the grasses and spare our seedlings.

It is not often advisable to do some farming task when the field is still dry. Weeding/application of herbicides are one of the task we must be careful to carry out only when there is an abundant of water in the field. It is the field is covered in swamp water and the rice plant are embedded in the water(although not to be submerged) or that we are assured of rains almost at the thesame period as at when we apply the herbicides.

These seedlings are already at their seed bearing stage and any moment from now we would have some seeds developing from the plants. They haven't grown up to the desired height compared to the life cycle stage of almost 3months that they are now. This has been the effect of the dry spells on them. Nevertheless it is time for seed production, rice plants will bear seeds regardless of their height, the only challenges is that much taller and healthier rice often bear much seeds than these ones that are trying to survive the effects of the dry spells.

Avoid the temptation of adding herbicides to weak plants or have recently been transplanted. Rice seedlings on which we apply herbicides must have spent at least a month in the farm after they are been transplanted. This makes it easy for the transplanted seedlings to better survive any adverse effects from the chemicals.

Another conditions why we may not apply fertiliser to plant is when these plants are close to their fruit bearing stage. We cannot afford to cause any more setback for this plants since they are at that stage hence we have chosen this hand weeding method.

Hand weeding may be tedious but it is healthier for our plants and our environment as well. Been able to do some hand weeding often minimizes the amount of herbicides we use on our farm. Over dependence on herbicides is not too healthy as agricultural waste equally constitute to the amount of pollution of our land and waters. Whenever the field is not too overwhelmed with grasses, carrying out manual weeding is healthy for our plant and the earth.

There are other parts of the farm we would be applying herbicides on but that will be based on certain other conditions of the rice growth phase and the necessity to use Herbicides.