PLANTING CROPS

CROP PRODUCTIONS

Crop production is essential to human and animal life and the economy in Tabaco City is still heavily dependent on agriculture where in major crops are produced such as rice, com, cacao, pili, root crops, vegetables, coconuts and abaca. This course, agricultural crops production prepares student to operate enterprises producing vegetables and other plant products and includes instruction in soils, plant physiology, crop cultivation practices, plant disease, pest management, harvesting and marketing. Planting crops has a lot of activities that we knew before the actual planting of crops. Food security, depletion of natural resources and the need for economically viable, sustainable and socially acceptable cropping and farming systems are topics that will become increasingly important in the light of human population growth. The agricultural cycle is the annual cycle of activities related to the growth and harvest of a crop (plant). These activities include loosening the soil, seeding, special watering, and moving plants when they grow bigger, and harvesting, among other thus the main steps for agricultural practices include preparation of soil, sowing, adding manure and fertilizers, irrigation, harvesting and storage. Students will work together hand in hand with their family and/or relatives in performing the activities/tasks will be rated as part of their performance tasks.

planting crops - Bing images

Learning skills from the curriculum guide

Learning Competency: Planting Crops

Learning Outcome: TLE_AFAACP9-12PLCR-iva-f-21

1. Prepare tools, materials, and equipment for land clearing:

2. Clear the land according to prescribed methods of land preparation.

Information sheet

Land preparation is one of the basic, but most important, cultural practices in lowland and upland vegetable production. Most of our direct seeded and transplanted vegetable crops give the best yields when the land for planting is well prepared. The benefits derived from well prepared soil are as follows:

Ø Helps control weeds through uprooting or buying and removal of all vegetation at the ground level and moving and stacking them in windrows for burning so that roots are left to decay or to be removed at later dates. Removal of all tree and stumps include roots, and moving and stacking them in windrows for subsequent burning.

Ø Softens the surface soil and prepare a good seedbed to allow easier seeding of crops.

Ø Exposes soil organic matter to oxygen and help release soil nutrients for crop growth.

Ø Helps improve the infiltration of water and assists operations that are needed to shape or level the land in order to allow more uniform water application.

Ø Incorporates any soil amendments including organic materials, lime, or basal fertilizers.

When clearing land, particularly for agricultural purposes, the density of native cover and soil type must be considered to help conserve the topsoil. This is an operation usually carried out before the conventional tillage in a farm land. Generally, there are several operations that are involved in land clearing depending on the type of vegetation, soil condition, topography, the extent of clearing required and the purpose for which the clearing is done.

Tools, farm Implements and Simple Equipment Used in land Preparation

Land clearing is an essential process in both commercial, residential and agricultural property development that surrounding areas which are unoccupied and covered with large trees, shrubs and undergrowth are removed to become a suitable planting area. How do you feel now that you are actually ready to prepare your own plot/garden? On our previous lessons we have already discussed the tools, materials and implements that are needed for land clearing/preparation. Listed below are some land clearing tools, implements, materials and equipment you should know about.

Ø HAND TOOLS- These tools are used by do-it-yourselves who want to clear their land and these tools are usually used for gardening. Some of hand tools for clearing land are hand cultivator, pruners, hand saws, shovels, pickaxes, rakes and hoes, however, each tools has its function so that someone should choose the right tool before doing the land-clearing job.

Ø FARM IMPLEMENTS- using a disc harrow (disc plough) to cultivate the soil where crops are to be planted it is also used to chop up wanted weeds or crop remainders. A harrow is used for the plant. The rotavator is an implement attached to a tractor used for land preparation that could be used for a wet and dry land preparation. One passing of rotavator is equivalent to the combined effect of one plowing and harrowing in land preparation. These farm implements could be attached and run by a carabao or a tractor that will make the job a lot easier for you.

Ø FARM equipment- there are different types of equipment used for land clearing such as the following:

· Tractor – it is the most useful and convenient equipment of the farmers during pre and post-harvest activities. It is used to pull a plow, harrow, and rotavator in preparing a wide area of land. Examples of a tractor are a two-wheel tractor, a four-wheel tractor, and a monoculture.

· Water pump- if the water is scarce, this equipment is very important to draw irrigation water from a source such as deep wells, rivers, and lakes.

· Rototiller- a motorized device having spinning blades perpendicular to the ground and arranged like spokes, used for tilling.

· Subsoiler rips hard ground to remove compaction lays and low areas to improve water drainage.

· Cultipacker is a place of agricultural equipment that crushes dirt clods, removes air pockets, and presses down small stones, forming a smooth, firm seedbed. It is a soil renovator.

· Grubber –is an effective grass removal equipment, ideal for those cases in which you just need to remove a small section of bushes or a few sapling using the spikes that can dig into a tree with a chain attached to the other end..

Note: some of this land clearing equipment is the commonly used for large-scale farming and it might not recognize for us.

Factors to consider in selecting the site for planting vegetable crops

Minimizing potential production problems is essential to all farming operations. This is especially true for vegetable producers.

Sunlight

The more sunlight the site receives the better for a vegetable garden because sunlight is the most important factor for growing healthy vegetables. Most vegetables need full sun (at least six hours of direct sunlight per day)to grow to their maximum potential, so avoid spots that are shaded by trees or buildings during the heat of the day.

sunlight.jpg (1920×1200) (detoxforlife.biz)

Types of soil- soil type refers to the physical composition or properties of the soil. Soil basically consists of decomposed mineral matter {sand, silt, and clay} and decomposed organic matter.