This is a little late but here we go in any case. The first rainy season crops have been planted. Here there temperatures are pretty constant throughout the year and since we are just about on the equator the days are 12 hours long year round. The main difference is between wet and dry seasons. The first and usually longer rainy season starts late-ish Sept through Dec and the second starts Late-ish Feb through June. There is some rain between the two season, but last year there was no rain from July to September.
Got new equipment so we had to unload it and put it together first. The equipment here comes from mainly tow sources - this Turkish company, Agromaster, that makes basic Ag equipment and a Brazilian company, Tatu, that makes these heavy duty tillage equipment. No electronic, oil bath bearings instead of greasible and simple design - just what we need. The planters are pneumatic which is nice, but not set up for no-till. I do not want a to till planter to not do any tillage, but to reduce the amount of tillage and still be able to get the planter though all the surface trash left over from the huge amount of grass and vegetation you start with here so we don not have to overwork the ground and can preserve more of the organic matter which is important as a buffer to the soil acidity.
Unloading the equipment by hand. Here it is nice to have extra hands.
Got the second season crops in. Some replanted potato seed, some corn and a lot of dry beans - navy, pinto and reds. The dry beans are a big push as they will go directly to the other program IPHD runs a school lunch. This was one of the reasons to start the agriculture program - to produce locally food for this program. The planting went a lot smoother and the rows a lot straighter as the tractor drivers have more experience now. I am also trying out some new herbicides for here that ate more matched to the weed problems here. The first indications are pretty good for sedge control with Halosulfuron.
We only planted a few onions and carrots as the pneumatic vegetable planter has not arrived yet, but I bought two Earthway planters and put them in a seed container to use for trials, but they worked just fine to plant a couple of acres. These planters are actually pretty adapted to conditions here and everyone wanted to have a go at them.
The insect pest pressure has not been that bad here with the beans mostly being affected the most. The second season though there were these giant crickets that cut the new plants off at the ground. Was a good time to explain economic threshold in pest control where you only treat for a pest when the damage done by this pest is grater than the cost of the treatment. In this case it was not true as well as in the case of some beetles eating some of the bean leaves, but not many. The thing is that they also catch these big crickets and eat them. I didn’t try any of these but did try a palm grub - it was not terrible.
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