Right now, I’m seated near the Miyawaki forest at Puliyarakonam. People still have doubts about how soil should be prepared for seedbeds. The oft-repeated questions are: “Why is so much soil needed?” and “Why is it so costly?”. So, to make things clearer, I’ve made a pit here that is 1 metre long, 1 metre deep and 1 metre wide. Since this area is full of rocks, we’ve removed them so that the roots can go down easily. That is also why the pit had to be so deep. Otherwise, the soil only needs to be loosened, and cow dung powder as well as other ingredients added to it. I’ve filled the pit with a mix of cow dung powder, coir pith and rice husk. If rice husk is unavailable, you may use wood shavings. It requires 30 to 40 baskets of mixture to fill a pit of such dimensions. All the ingredients should be equal in weight.
What you have to do is: get a JCB to loosen the soil to a depth of 1 metre, remove soil from half-a-metre depth, and fill the rest of the pit with the potting mixture using the JCB. In Kerala, it takes Rs 395/- to prepare a seedbed that covers one square metre or 10 sq. feet. In places like Bengaluru, the cost may go up to Rs 450/-. This figure covers the expense of the potting mixture as well as that of nursing the saplings in grow bags.
A single grow bag holds a 3 kg mixture of soil, cow dung powder, coir pith and rice husk. The market price of this potting mixture is Rs 65/- and that of the grow bag, Rs 15/-, if bought in bulk quantities. Thus, the total comes to Rs 80/- per prepared grow bag. The cost of a sapling ranges between Rs 30/- and Rs 70/-, depending on its size. It has to be taken care of for 3 to 4 months, or two-and-a-half at least, in a grow bag before the actual planting. Four such saplings have to be planted in a one-square-metre area. The sum total of Rs 395/- includes the labour cost too, because it involves transporting cow dung and coir pith from other areas. If you can arrange them on your own, the cost can be reduced greatly. This is how a seedbed is prepared. And this is the cost entailed in planting the saplings.