Hello dear fellow Hivers and people of the great community of Agricultural Mindset. I hope we are all doing well. Today I will be exposing you all to my tireless effort in making sure my family has some maize seeds in the soil and also showing you how these maize seeds are planted to grow into a maize plants for those who may want to learn and join in planting maize this season.
Whenever the first rain falls in the new year, it wakes farmers up and gets them to work. I am a young farmer and I work on the farm alone most of the time because my parents are always busy at work. They only join me ijn the farm on weekends. So the first activity I did after the rain was to clear up the farm.
This first rain serves a lot of functions.One it softens the soil for farmers to easily till. The stress of manually tilling the soil is much reduced and there is no formation of large lumps. If these lumps were formed,it gives the farmer a greater work of harrowing, which is the activity aimed at breaking soil lumps to fine form. The picture below shows some pictures of soil lumps that need to be made fine before planting. This was due to late planting.
Second is to help make the nutrients in the soil easily available for plant absorption. Water is a very essential element of plant germination. When the rain falls, the planted maize seeds then absorb water from the soil and open up to form shoots and roots. Below are the little growing maize plants I planted after the first rain.
Whenever I visit our farms far away from home, I normally see other farmers who planted late and their maize is yet to grow. Planting is a brother to praying. Every farmer has to always pray for his or farm. This is what I mean ,in one of our farms,I planted over 200 maize seeds but barely 50 successfully germinated. Some must have died in the soil or eaten up by rodents.
The close enemy of our farm is the lizard,it goes into our farm,digs up the soil and eats the maize seeds or sometimes eats the leaves and the plants die.
Before I conclude, I would love to teach us the steps to have some maize plants in our farms.
Clear up the farm you want to cultivate on and till the soil to make it soft.
Next get your maize seeds with no faults as seeds eaten by insects would never germinate.
Make some holes not too deep on the tilled soil.
Pick your maize seeds in threes or twos and place them in the whole.
Cover the holes with soil gently and do not pressure the surface to ease the shoot emergence when it's time.
When you have done all these, then wait for your maize plants to grow and you harvest them. After harvesting, enjoy the fruit of your labor.
