I am of the mindset that you leverage off nature to keep your soil healthy. With this in mind, and with the underlying principle of keeping it toxic chemical free, we have certain practices in place to keep it natural and organic. Being situated in an area with many rivers, streams dried up streams and
where big floods have occurred, our land is peppered with river stones and rocks. To top that, we have found debris from demolished structures, We continue to clear what we find, putting the rocks and stones by the banks of the river that cuts across the land and finally, we have it relatively clear of it. We have always cut the weeds or grass, performed manual weeding, composting the vegetation wastes and manual tilling. In return we find that the land has continued to be fertile. This month, we finally experimented using a petrol-powered tiller and it has definitely cut down on the time needed to prepare the soil for planting. Before using the tiller, we first used the weed cutter to cut down the vegetation to a few of inches or cm above the ground. This enabled us to mix the soil with the vegetation waste as we till the soil. This in effect acts organic matter to the soil, improving drainage as well as adding nutrients to the soil as it decomposes.
In the last three years, we have relied only on farm-produced fertilisers with the addition of EM-1. Before we plant, we will add our fertiliser mixture to the planting area in accordance to what will be planted, mixing it in the soil. We have basically two types of organic fertilisers: one used for fruiting plants and trees like tomatoes, chillies, pulasan, cempedak, etc. and the other for greens such as leafy vegetables. However on certain plants or trees where both the fruits and leaves are harvested, I would alternate the type of fertiliser applied. As we are situated in a rain catchment area, it often rains hence we only need to water the plants if it hasn’t rained for a couple of days. We plant many types of plants and trees with the emphasis being local non-GMO varieties. We experiment with local companion planting ideas such as planting green spinach in between our cili padi plants, etc.
We also have our own plant rotation cycle hence we have carefully selected where we plant long-term trees such as rambutan, cempedak, coconuts, soursop and many others, We consider banana plants to be mid-term plants as we rotate where they are planted every 3 years and we will totally clear the plant all the way to the roots. This is done with a view to keep the soil healthy and to allow rejuvenation of soil naturally as plants use soil nutrients differently and releases different nutrients to the soil.
As we progress, we continually study what else can be done to improve the soil condition naturally and what is suitable for application at the farm.