History:
The mission dry land farming area was identified by the
director, way back in early 1996. It was then put forward to the agricultural
ministry to see how best it could be developed. This delayed for some time up to
March 1997 when work on the area started. Full development came into being beginning
early 1998. By May 1998, the first crops were harvested from the dry land farm.
The garden has several sections which include:
a. drip irrigation
b. intensive vegetable farming
c. composting section
d. orchard
e. vegetable seed nurseries
Objectives:
1. To act as a demonstration ground to people living
the locality and
people visiting the mission.
2. To provide some basic food requirements for the mission.
3. To act as a training ground on some specific topics like
integrated pest management;
organic farming; drip irrigation, etc.
4. To help people understand that even degraded land can be
brought into full
production if managed properly.
5. To act as a training ground on contour farming.
6. To act as a learning ground on fruit tree management by
constructing mini
catchments made out of rocks.
Soil Fertility Management
Since we are working in harmony with nature, we mostly
stress the use of natural fertilizers like chicken manure, legumes, compost, and goat
manure. To make manure tea we put chicken manure in a gunny bag and put the sack in
a drum of water. Then we let it stand for three weeks. After
diluting at the
rate of 5 liters manure tea to 15 liters of water, it is fed to the plants through the
bucket drip system. This is fed to different crops at different time periods:
i. leafy vegetables
ii. fruit vegetables (tomatoes) -- once a fortnight
iii. root crops (onions, etc.) once a month
