Hello Hive

It is not advisable to apply chemicals to your rice field when there is no rain. It will affect the crop drastically. This is the reason why we are doing hand weeding currently. Whenever herbicides are applied to farms, it affects both the crops and the weeds alike only that it has a little impact on the crops since it is a selective herbicide that will clear out the weeds and spare the crops. But that doesn't mean that the crops won't feel the impact of the applied chemicals even a little.

When herbicides are applied during rain periods, the rains dilutes the excessive herbicides from the plant, keeping the crops safe. This is why it is essential to only apply herbicides whenever rain is predicted to pour within the week or two of herbicides application. When there is no rain should endure the labour of Hand weeding to keep the crops safe.

Good morning fellow hivers and passionate farmers.
It's the breaking of another new day and even though the weather is scarcely bright we are already at the farm working. We just arrived some few mins ago. It's often early to bed for us so that we can arrive at the farm early, get our farming work for the day done before we can proceed to the next task for the day.

Arriving much early to farm especially on sunny days is usually a good habit for us. We would be able to accomplish a whole lot of the work we came to do before sunrise which makes the temperature so hot, sunny and unbearable for work.

Exactly this time last week we started off with thinning of our rice field. Thinning is very important for reducing the number of seedlings in each field to give room for maximum productivity. And it is an important requirements especially for planted rice. If these is not done, plants can get overpopulated as not perform maximally.
Transplanted rice often do not need thinning as we are careful about the quantity of grains we plant per hole.

While at that task we can not do that further and have to revert back to weeding first.

You can see how that the grasses are taking over the rice field. Planted rice often grow grasses faster than the transplanted one. They sometimes germinate almost at the same time with when the rice germinates and even threatens to take over the fields if we do not weed them out early enough. Early weeding is good so that the grasses do not remain in the farm for longer periods to making the rice to experience setback or start to have yellow leaves. A healthy rice field should maintain a dark green color.

One thing that has been of great help to us is the addition of herbicides we often do right after planting of grains. This kills grass seed pods and potential grasses that will germinate almost immediately to compete with our rice growth. This has been the reason why this farm is yet to be overwhelmed by grasses.

So basically we are performing two tasks in this farm currently, weeding and thinning of the field.

The weather is very cloudy and pregnant with rain but it never falls

This is how it has been for the past few days. Cloudy and cold yet no rain. We are just working and taking care of our fields pending when the rains will fall aid their progressive growth.