Hi every body

I am Prabhu Nanjan, an agriculturist living in a beautiful place called Pororai , situated in Nilgiris, South India. I would call myself an Organic farming enthusiast and have attempted on several occasions to convert the many pockets of small tea farms my family owned.

History.

The mother earth had endowed upon these mountain terrains an inherent fertility and a salubrious climate and rainfall. The ancestors mainly took to cultivating food grains and potatoes which were done with a intimate and effective harmony with nature. The use of chemicals was unknown to them and generations of farming went on without inflicting any damage to soil and environment.

Challenges

Down the generations these property were divided among their offspring in an ineffective way. The challenge lay in the way the entire land holdings by my family were situated. The whole of the property is not as a contiguous area of cultivation but was interspersed among several small patches held by neighbors. Material movement is so very ineffective and irrigation just inconceivable. The main cultivation in these fields used to be potato and lately many of these lands were converted to tea by a major initiative by HADP. These government bodies did a commendable job in convincing farmers to take to modern methods and slowly and steadily the soil started losing its health due to the addition of Urea and Ammonium sulphate along with the multitude of pesticides.

Having said this background I ventured upon the process of converting my fields to the Organic way thereby starting on the much needed medication and healing to mother Earth. Starting this week I would be briefing you all with the week by week account on my progress along with lots of soil test results; also the pesticide percentage on the harvest in comparison with that of other fields .day experiences with you in conversion of the Inorganic tea garden to Organic tea garden, the difference in the soil and the plant in the two gardens.

I am very much worried about the use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides in farming and the worse effects that gives in a long run. So I decided to convert and also to analyze my organic tea gardens to that of the inorganic field which is 500 meters apart from my conversion field. I want to check the residue content in the soil and in the tea leaf of both the fields, which would be done once in a year and the day to day activities I would like to update it on a weekly basis, which would give a better chance to know about our organic garden and the inorganic garden.

I am planning to convert 1.50 acres of inorganic tea garden into organic tea garden. My first activity is to convert the pruned tea bush as compost, earlier which was used as firewood.

PREPARING BD COMPOST

On 15-Feb-2009 I put up a heap of tea bushes for preparing BD compost. This would take 4-6 months to decompose into BD compost. The length of the heap is around 500m and breath 2m and height appro.1.5m.

Wait for the photos of the garden and the initial soil test results till next week.

Happy Blogging

Prabhu