Now with Drip irrigation all set, we wanted to get started with our planting plan right away. We wanted to start with greens and also to have our family elders be part of the first day sowing. Convincing my appa was difficult as he hasn't visited Coimbatore for more than a year. He agreed to come on April 12 evening ..so fixed 13 April morning. My in-laws couldn't make it as my FIL was on vacation. Uncle was traveling as well. However we had a house full with my parents and brother's family all present. They all wanted to encourage us with the effort.

I went to the farm at 5.30 and completed the final preparation of the bed, and got all seeds ready for sowing.

1. We flattened the bed as much as we could.
2. Prepared a bio fertilizer mix that contains 90% vermi compost and the rest 10% a combination of azospirillum, phospobacterium, rhizobium, VAM, trichoderma viride, and pseudomonas
3. Spread a thin layer of the bio fertilizer mix
4. Mixed seeds with 3 portions of sand - to make it easy to identify where we have sowed already and avoid overloading the seeds in one place.(even then we overloaded in certain areas..that's a different story :)

Everyone came by 7 AM and with a short prayer we sowed the seeds for Mulai Keerai. We finished one bed and we all sat there for a bit and had a great time until the sun started scorching us.

The next day, mom and I went to the farm early and completed three more small beds with siru keerai, arai keerai and thandu keerai.

Day of sowing

There were still some left over work regarding the pathway and gate valves.