Exactly a month after our Nursery-making Workshop in November (2009), on the 29th of December Dr. Rajnarayan (from KVK) demonstrated how saplings of broccoli, Chinese cabbage and capsicum should be transplanted.
Vegetable beds on day of sowing (30th Nov-2009) and one month later with ready saplings
The further-most bed in the photo on the right (above) has broccoli saplings. The next two have capsicum saplings and the one in the foreground of the photo has Chinese cabbage saplings, all ready for transplanting into their beds where they will grow.
Gently picking out the sapling after wetting the earth
It is a good idea to transplant saplings in the late afternoon (we started after 3:00pm) as the harshness of the sun has decreased for the day. This reduces the shock the sapling faces.
To ensure that we didn’t break the roots we wet the earth, thus softening it and in this way made pulling saplings out easy.
Getting ready to transport the saplings to the fields
Since 21 farmers have participated in this experiment, and we had limited saplings, we made bunches of 5-10 saplings and distributed it amongst ourselves. Saplings were then wrapped in hay, cloth or bunched in baskets to limit handling and damage.
Preparing beds and watering them before transplanting
Beds were prepared in the same manner as we did for the nurseries. Trichoderma virde powder (a bio-fungicide) was incorporated into the soil to prevent possible disease attack for the yet young and ‘in-shock’ saplings. Water was sprinkled on the beds to facilitate transplanting.
Capsicum is transplanted into beds
Capsicum saplings were transplanted 40cms apart in alternate rows (the rows without the saplings are used as channels for watering the beds later).
Chinese cababge is transplanted into rows
Chinese cabbage and broccoli were transplanted in rows keeping a distance of 50cms between plants.
All plants have to be watered twice a day preferably before 9:00am and after 4:00pm to prevent the leaves from getting scorched from the strong sun.
