myAgro is always striving to help our farmers be successful and increase their harvests so that they can fulfill their dreams of educating their children, feeding their family all year long, buying a cow or other animal to help with farm labor or of improving other parts of their lives. We help increase harvests by offering small technical changes to their planting methods that increase yields. These changes can range from the addition of fertilizer to barren fields or to something as small as changing the way the farmers plant their seeds in their vegetable farms.
In this vein, myAgro is proud to introduce a new planting stick that will be included in this year’s vegetable packages to help the farmers improve their planting methods. Traditionally, farmers simple broadcast (throw) seed in a small area to make their seed nurseries. This means that when the seeds germinate and the plants begin to grow, they have very limited space as the seeds have been haphazardly spread on the ground. Using this method results in many plants growing, but in weak root development which makes transplanting very difficult because the roots are tangled. To address this, we have developed a low-cost planting stick that the farmers can use to ensure that proper spacing is followed without drastically increasing the amount of time it takes to plant their nursery.
The stick is 50cm long with 12 nails embedded in it. The farmer uses it first to measure the nursery bed which is 50cm by 1 meter. Using the stick, the farmer can measure the width as one stick length and then they can measure the length with two stick lengths. After making the nursery bed, they use the stick and push down making small holes with proper spacing between each hole and the proper depth of each pocket. Using this method, each 50cm by 1 meter nursery bed can provide the proper growing conditions for 240 plants.
Using this small tool, farmers will be able to quickly sow their seeds in a way that will enhance growth and development by providing each plant with enough space to access the available water and nutrients in the soil.
