Take 2 kg jaggery and mix it in a plastic drum containing 200 liters water. Now take 1 bottle of waste decomposer and pour all its contents in a plastic drum containing jaggery solution. Avoid direct contact of contents with hands. Mix it properly with a wooden stick for uniform distribution of waste decomposer in a drum. Cover the drum with a paper or cardboard and stir it every day once or twice. After 5 days the solution of drum turns creamy.
Sustainable agriculture
What is Coir Pith Compost?
The largest by products of coconut is coconut husk from which coir fibre is extracted. This extraction process generates a large quantity of dusty material called coir dust or coir pith. Large quantity of coir waste of about 7.5 million tonnes is available annually form coir industries in India. In Tamil Nadu state alone 5 lakh tons of coir dust is available.
Coir pith has gained importance owing to its properties for use as a growth medium in Horticulture. Because of wider carbon and nitrogen ratio and lower biodegradability due to high lignin content, it is still not considered as a good carbon source for use in agriculture. It is composted to reduce the wider C:N ratio, reduce the lignin and cellulose content and also to increase the manorial value of pith. Composting of coir pith reduces its bulkiness and converts plant nutrients to the available form.
What is the Coimbatore method of composting ?
Composting is done in pits of different sizes depending on the waste material available. A layer of waste materials is first laid in the pit. It is moistened with a suspension of 5-10 kg cow dung in 2.5 to 5.0 I of water and 0.5 to 1.0 kg fine bone meal sprinkled over it uniformly. Similar layers are laid one over the other till the material rises 0.75 m above the ground level. It is finally plastered with wet mud and left undisturbed for 8 to 10 weeks. Plaster is then removed, material moistened with water, given a turning and made into a rectangular heap under a shade. It is left undisturbed till its use.
In Coimbatore method, there is anaerobic decomposition to start with, following by aerobic fermentation. It is the reverse in Bangalore method. The Bangalore compost is not so thoroughly decomposed as the Indore compost or even as much as the Coimbatore composting, but it is bulkiest.
What is the Bangalore method of composting ?
Dry waste material of 25 cm thick is spread in a pit and a thick suspension of cow dung in water is sprinkled over for moistening. A thin layer of dry waste is laid over the moistened layer. The pit is filled alternately with dry layers of material and cow dung suspension till it rises 0.5 m above ground level. It is left exposed without covering for 15 days. It is given a turning, plastered with wet mud and left undisturbed for about 5 months or till required.
What are the steps followed for preparing Rapo composting?
The steps followed for preparing Rapid composting are collection of biowaste materials, Segregation of non-biodegradable materials, Waste materials mixed with fresh cow dung, Inoculation with consortium of organisms, all materials mixed together and fed to rapo-compost bioreactor, after one month the humified organic manure was allowed for curing and Sieved (4 mm sieves) and stored at 25% moisture condition.
What is the procedure to make compost from parthenium?
Following procedure can be followed for making Parthenium compost:
Make a pit of 3x 6x10feet (depth x width x length) at a place where water dose not stagnate. Pit size can be increased or decreased but depth cannot be compromised. If possible, cover the surface and sidewalls of the pit with stone chips. It will protect absorption of essential nutrient of compost by the soil surface. If stone cheep is not available, make soil surface compact. Arrange about 100 kg dung, 10 kg urea or rock phosphate, soil (1-2 Quintals) and one drum of water near the pit. Collect all the Parthenium plants from your field and nearby area. Spread about 50 kg of Parthenium on the surface of pit. Over this sprinkle 500 gm urea or 3 kg rock phosphate. If possible, add Trichoderma viridi or Trichoderma harziana (kind of fungi cultured powder) in the amount of 50 gm per layer. All the above constituents will make one layer. Like first layer make several layers till the pit is filled up to 1 fit high from the ground surface. Fill the pit in dome shape. While making layers, apply pressure by feet to make weed biomass compact. If there is no soil with Parthenium roots than add 1012kg of loamy soil on each layer. When pit is full with above-described layers then cover it with mixture of cow dung, soil and husk. After 4-5 months we can get well decomposed compost. We can get 37–45% of compost from 37-42 quintals of Parthenium biomass.
In which method parthenium can be made into compost?
It is always recommended by the scientists to collect the parthenium biomass before flowering for making compost either by NADEP or open pit method. But it is not practically possible to collect only flowerless plants as all the stages of Parthenium are available at any time due to non-dormancy of seeds which may germinate on the availability of water. Therefore, farmers are bound to uproot every stage of Parthenium during weeding in their fields.
How to utilize parthenium to make compost?
Parthenium hysteroforus commonly known as Congress grass, Carrot grass, Chatak Chandni etc. is a menace to farmland, human-beings, animals, environment and biodiversity. About 35 million hectare of land is so infested with Parthenium. Previously it was a problem of waste and barren land but now Parthenium is a big problem in each and every crop field, orchards and even in the forest.
Due to continuous and large-scale use of chemical fertilizers, fertility of land is decreasing gradually. Therefore, bio-fertilizer is a boon for soil health. The demand of bio-fertilizer is increasing day by day. We can make bio-fertilizer from abundantly occurred biomass of Parthenium. By making use of this weed, at one hand we can increase the productivity of our crop land by weeding out of this weed while at other hand we can even earn money by making compost on commercial basis from this waste material.
What are the benefits of using Dasagavya?
The benefits of using Dasagavya are helps to increase growth, yield and quality of the crops. Controls pests like aphids, thrips, mites and other sucking pests. Controls diseases like leaf spot, leaf blight, powdery mildew etc.
How to prepare Dasagavya?
Extracts are prepare by separately soaking the foliage in cow urine in 1:1 ratio (1 kg chopped leaves in 1 litre cow urine) for ten days. The filtered extracts of all the plants are then added @ 1 litre each to 5 litres of the panchagavya solution. The mixture is kept for 25 days and stirred well, meanwhile, to ensure thorough mixing of panchagavya and the plant extracts.