If you keep the soil moist you are able to plant a second crop like maize and wheat in the dry season. You can use different tricks and work with two methods: strip tillage and bed planting.
When you keep crop rests like straws on the field, it stays moist longer. But most farmers plough their fields before sowing and don‘t leave any straw left. This way soil gets poorer and dries faster.
Second crop
Farmers in Bangladesh like to use machines that sow the crops early without tilling the entire field. Therefore they can grow a better crop in the dry season. They harvest more and save labour, time, water and money.
Strip tillage
With rice varieties you are able to begin the dry season crop earlier. You can start another week earlier with maize and wheat. Therefore, you never plough the entire land after the rice harvest. A two wheel tractor with special attachment boxes can plant the seeds and spread the fertilizer while filling.
When you remove some of the blades and only till narrow strips of land, you will see that stubbles stay left. The rest of the soil continues staying firm and the second crop can grow successfully. The blades should chop the rice about 30 centimetres above the ground, so that the straw stubbles can give the soil moisture for a longer period.
Strip tillage saves water, labour and fuel so that farmers and service providers profit from it.
Bed planting
Another water, labour and money saving method is bed planting. Therefore, you have rotating blades that till the soil. The soil forms shapes looking like beds.
If you grow your plants on beds it is easier to irrigate and saves water. Furthermore it helps to control rats. The beds let more sunshine light through, which the rats don‘t like and the watering makes the soil more firmly in the furrows, so the rats scrabble there less.
The machine for bed planting fertilizes and applies seeds at the same time, just like the strip tillage tractor.
