Guidelines

Repeated ploughing is necessary to obtain a good tilth. Every effort may be made to secure a pulverised surface. Too much cultivation for cotton is not considered to possess any special benefits.

• Running of blade harrow two or three times across the field produce a fairly good tilth.
• After getting required tilth, the land is laid out into ridges and furrows with the help of a ridge plough or a bund former.
• Ridging of land and sowing cotton on ridges economise the use of irrigation water and the furrows acts drainage channels whenever heavy rains are received particularly in heavy clays. Ridging is very useful for sowing of seed by dibbling and later irrigation and also facilitates for better drainage.
• Length of ridge/furrow depends on slope of land.
• If the slope is < 1 % the ridge length may be 30 - 40 meters.
• Provide proper water ways (particularly in heavy soils) along the slope of the land for draining excess water under heavy rainfall situations. Cotton being highly sensitive to poor drainage.
• Expeditious accompletion of sowing on the black soils is necessary if undesirable results of late sowing due to heavy showers of rain are to be avoided.
• For good growth of cotton plants on deep black soils three things besides initial soil fertility are usually necessary. a) The soil should be free from injurious weeds. b) The soil should possess adequate moisture in the surface layers for the first few weeks after sowing. c) It should be provided with good surface drainage thereafter to prevent water - logging.
• Deep cultivation in hot dry tracts encourages loss of moisture as well as organic matter from soil. More frequent tillage than is really necessary is also said to produce the same adverse effects.
• For hybrids/high yielding varieties of cotton, since, cotton hybrids are deep rooted, 2 - 3 deep ploughings are necessary by using mould board plough or tractor drawn disc ploughs.
• Use of sub-soiler may be helpful in heavy black soils once in 2 - 3 years where soil pans are usually formed.
• For irrigated cotton, the land is usually given a preparatory flooding and ploughed two or three times to secure a good tilth.

Equipment to be used

• The tillage implements used for growing the cotton crop vary with the:
  • nature of the soil,
  • the method of growing the crop and
  • the different operations of cultivation.
• The implements in common use is:
  • Desi plough,
  • the bakhar or blade harrow,
  • a beam leveller or cold crusher,
  • single or multi-coultered wooden seed drills,
  • Kolpa or blade cultivator and
  • a Khurpi or hand hoe
  • pegged or spike toothed harrows
  • three tines hoes(triphallies)
  
  

  Note

• These two implements are used in Punjab state in place of blade harrows.

Desi plough

These are light implements and are usually drawn by one pair of bullocks.

• They penetrate only three to five inches of soil, breaking it into small clods.
• The desi plough only stirs the soil and does not invert it.
• Essentially similar in design in all part of the country, the wooden plough varies in dimensions to suit the prevailing soil types, moisture conditions and the size of strength of the draft animals.
• Light mould-board ploughs, made wholly of iron, or partly of iron and partly of wood.
• Commonly used in place of the desi ploughs.
• Available in the market in variety to suit different soil conditions and purposes.
• These improved implements do the work more efficiently by inverting the soil and thus burying weeds and plant residues that may be remaining on the surface.

This implement is used for preparatory cultivation in black cotton soils.

• The body of this implement is made up of a log of wood, rectangular or octagonal in shape, three to six feet in length, twelve to fifteen inches in width and two to three inches in thickness.
• A handle is attached on the upper side of this log and a yoke pole for a pair of bullocks in front.
• The working part of the implement consists of a heavy blade or iron.
• The blade is attached to the log on its under side by means of two slanting wooden pegs.
• In some parts of Madras, an improved guntaka, having a slightly curved blade fitted to an iron frame instead of a log of wood, is in use.
• The most effective single implement for light and economic cultivation of the black soils.
• The blade harrow is also used for breaking clods, levelling land, or covering the sown seed by running it inverted after detaching the handle.

Akkadi / Mogha / Sadde / Sarota

• The implement in general use for sowing the seed in lines in the black cotton soil tracts is the simple appliance called mogha, sarota, sadde or akkadi.
• This one-row drill consists of a single bamboo tube, about three to four feet in length and one-and-a-half or two inches in diameter.
• The tube is fitted at its upper end with a perforated wooden bowl into which the seed is fed.
• The implement is fastened by a rope to a blade harrow and guided by a woman along the furrow made by the edge of harrow blade.

• Indigenous drill with two or three tubes commonly used for sowing the cotton seed. It consists of a beam fitted with two or three types resembling little ploughs, each of which has a hole running through it.
• Into these holes are fitted bamboo or metal tubes, the upper ends of which meet in a wooden or metallic bowl. When the implement is driven across the field, the seed fed into the cup falls down the tubes and drops into the small furrows made by the little ploughs. These simple, indigenous drills have been in use for centuries past and have been found satisfactory in operation and well suited to the available, small-sized draft animals.
• However, it does not have any device for regulating the distance between plants in the rows.

• For the weeding of the crop, hand hoes of different types are used.
• This implement not only removes the weeds but also loosens the soil. The implement used for the same purpose in Uttar Pradesh and in the black cotton soil tracts in central, western and southern India, is a small sized, triangular or sickle shaped hand hoe known as Khurpi. The bent blade of the Khurpi has a sharp edge, which penetrates the soil easily and uproots the young weeds.

• This implement has three bent, iron tines attached to a wooden log which is provided with a handle and a yoke pole.
• The width of the implement is adapted to the spacing between the successive cotton rows.
• In the black cotton soil tracts in central and southern India, the hoeing is done by bullock hoes, called variously Kolpa, dauri, daura, yade kunte and danthulu. This implement resembles the blade harrow.