Chapter 881 Weather and Grain Selection
The summer grain has been harvested, the grain distribution has been completed, and the excess grain has been returned to the warehouse. What to plant next season is a question worthy of discussion.
Li Mengxi didn't know much about farming. He thought he could find out the truth from others. It turned out that others knew about farming. Others knew the types of crops and every detail of farming. But he could ask about the most critical part, what kind of crops are they growing?
People have different answers about which crop is best. Some people say that it is better to grow millet, some say it is better to grow wheat, and some say it is better to grow beans. Most of the answers are concentrated among these three.
Legumes can fix nitrogen and fertilize the ground, you know this.
However, when it comes to the staple foods of millet and wheat, there are people who say which ones are good, but in the end, there must be one with the highest yield.
Everyone had different opinions, so Li Mengxi could only make his own judgment.
Farming is greatly affected by the weather. In recent years, the temperature has become colder. In the future, the temperature will become colder and colder. The temperature will be low. Naturally, crops that are highly dependent on temperature and sunlight will suffer greater yield losses.
What are the crops that are highly dependent on temperature? Thinking about it conversely, what are the main crops in places with high temperatures and sufficient sunshine?
In the hot south, the staple food is undoubtedly rice.
It can be judged from this that rice is more dependent on sunlight and temperature. As the temperature becomes lower, the rice yield will be reduced more seriously.
This is one of the judgments.
Secondly, it seems that wheat plants are relatively cold-resistant. The reason is that highland barley can grow in such a cold place on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Highland barley is also a type of wheat. Since it belongs to the same species, it means that it probably has the same habit.
Similarly, highland barley is cold-tolerant, and wheat will probably be cold-tolerant as well.
Also, a farmer's proverb says, "Wheat is covered with three layers of quilt in winter, and next year you sleep with steamed buns on your pillow." Wheat can survive the winter, but I have never heard of rice surviving the winter.
Millet, commonly known as millet. Since millet is also rice, assuming the nomenclature is correct and assuming that millet is also rice, the performance of millet and rice should be close. That is, when the temperature drops, the yield of millet will be more serious than that of wheat.
After making this judgment, Li Mengxi decided to plant wheat next season.
It is expected that a few ordinary farmers can detect changes in weather and weather, and a few can fully understand the relationship between climate and crops. Farmers have rich experience in farming, but experience is not always correct, and experience will also bring about inertia.
Although he had decided to plant wheat, out of caution, Li Mengxi asked in detail about the differences in habits between millet and wheat. The farmers replied that millet grows quickly, but it is not drought-resistant. If the land is good and the water is sufficient, planting millet will be easier.
Son is better.
Upon hearing this, Li Mengxi thought that rice also grew quickly and was not drought-tolerant. This once again proved that millet and rice were probably the same crop.
As for farmers saying that growing millet is better, Li Mengxi thinks that farmers may have other considerations. For example, millet is delicious. For example, millet has no bran and can be directly cooked into porridge, while wheat must be ground before it can be eaten.
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Millet is high in cost performance, but does not really have an advantage in yield.
Millet has the major advantage of being easy to process, but if the mill is convenient enough and the cost of wheat processing is reduced, the processing advantage of millet will be gone.
After taking all kinds of considerations into consideration, for the next season's planting, wheat will be planted throughout the territory, and millet will not be allowed to be planted again.
Planting wheat is the option with the highest yield.
After discussing the issue of staple food, we still have the issue of non-staple food. Summer harvest is in May and June, and autumn planting is in September to October.
In the three to four months between, it is simply not enough to plant staple crops for one season, so during the period between summer and autumn planting, crops that grow quickly are mostly planted.
Leguminous plants grow quickly and mature in just three to four months. They can also add fertilizer to the ground, making them suitable for interplanting.
Beans include soybeans, mung beans, cowpeas, black beans, peas, etc.
Considering a key issue, the key issue is that Julu now has a lot of land but insufficient population. That is, at the farming gate, there is not much time for intensive farming. This is a big problem.
Therefore, Li Mengxi felt that the beans should be planted with the fastest harvest, and the beans should be harvested early to allow sufficient time for field preparation and sowing.
The fastest growing legume is peas.
Li Mengxi expressed his thoughts according to his own understanding.
After listening to what Li Mengxi said, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture fell silent.
As soon as everyone fell silent, Li Mengxi was keenly aware that something was wrong, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"
Later, the officials explained the differences between different beans to Li Mengxi.
It turns out that different beans are planted at different times. Soybeans are planted in summer, and soybeans are planted after wheat is harvested. Peas are planted in autumn and harvested in spring; red beans and mung beans are planted in spring and harvested in summer.
Officials don't know exactly why. Anyway, if you don't plant according to the time of day, it won't grow well.
Li Mengxi speculated that different beans have different needs for temperature and rain, and soybeans are suitable for harvesting in summer and planting in autumn.
After the discussion, the summer harvest was over, the fields were prepared, and soybeans were planted throughout the territory. The soybeans were harvested in one season, and in the autumn, wheat was planted throughout the territory.
According to the overall overall planning of the land in Julu, in addition to growing food, the best choice is to grow vegetables in some rugged areas that are not suitable for farming.
Furthermore, if we want everyone in the country to be cured of illness, it is not enough to collect and buy medicines. We must grow some commonly used herbal medicines.
Planting vegetables and medicines cannot rely on the people's consciousness. People would rather plant all the land with food than waste any land on growing vegetables. Therefore, growing vegetables and land must be enforced by administrative means.
It is possible to survey all the land in rugged areas throughout the territory that is inconvenient for farming, and divide it into vegetable fields, medicinal fields, and even alfalfa planting areas, and even hemp cultivation, in order to achieve the optimal solution for land use.
The land conditions vary from place to place. There are always some places where the land is very fertile and flat, but there are also places where the land around the villages is all rugged and difficult to plow. But whether it is the people in the flat areas or the people in the rugged areas,
In addition to growing food, the people in the land also have the need to grow hemp and weave clothes. Therefore, the people in the flat and fertile land will allocate a few acres of fertile land to grow hemp, and the people in the rugged and barren areas will also plant it.
How many acres are used to grow flax? This is not the optimal solution for land use.
The optimal solution is that if a certain village is full of fertile land, then all crops should be grown; if a certain village is full of rocky and rugged land, then all land should be planted with hemp.
In this way, as long as the materials are coordinated and distributed, everyone will have food and everyone will have hemp.
The Ministry of Agriculture took the order to survey the land in various places according to the order. The first stop was the nearby Julu County. In Julu County itself, every time the officials went to a farming site, they first visited all the land in the farming site, and then
Among the large areas of land, the most rugged, barren and arid lands are classified as vegetable plots.
"There is an order from above that no grains can be grown on these pieces of land, only vegetables!" An official nailed a sign to the four corners of a piece of dry land, distinguishing the worst piece of land independently.
[To be honest, I have been using the Huanyuan app recently to read and catch up on updates. It allows me to switch between sources and read aloud with many sounds. .huanyuanapp is available for Android and Apple.]
"Do you understand? You are not allowed to grow food. Either you don't grow it, or you can only grow vegetables!"
After the explanation, the official rode away without stopping.
The vegetable plot selected by the officials for the farming site here is the worst piece of the more than 2,000 acres of land here. It is a newly opened wasteland on a slope. The stones in the field have not been picked up yet, and the grass roots are not there.
They haven't been picked up yet, and there are a lot of weeds growing there.
The villagers gathered around the rotten field and discussed it. For a long time, the village chief said to everyone, "I am asked to grow vegetables. Which one of you has vegetables?"
There are not a few people who have vegetable seeds. Some have radish seeds, some have leek seeds, as well as cucumbers, pumpkins, winter melons, etc. Everyone has collected their seeds, and there have been quite a few.
Then, on the same day, the gardeners dug up the vegetable field, randomly picked up grass roots, dug holes and planted various seeds, then watered the field and watered it, and the vegetables were planted.
On the same day, Li Mengxi visited various farming sites. In the fields, he once again saw flaws in production cooperation.
Most of the people who work in the fields are from different ethnic groups, so it is understandable how difficult it is for strangers to work together.
Agricultural production is indispensable for cooperative labor. When it comes to sowing seeds, no one is digging holes in the front and dropping seeds behind. It is simply impossible for one person to do it alone.
Li Mengxi went down to the field, called the campers together, and asked everyone, if twenty people are counted as a group, and the land of twenty people is counted as one family, and everyone works together and harvests together, when the grain is seen, it is divided equally among the twenty people.
What is everyone's opinion?
The campers looked at each other, you looked at me and I looked at you. In the end, some said they were willing, and some said they wanted to go it alone.
Li Mengxi nodded, indicating that he understood.
There will definitely be problems if you work alone. For example, if two people work together to plow the land, one person pulls the plow and the other plows the plow, and then they agree to plow one person's land first and then the other person's land. Unfortunately, it rains suddenly.
As we all know, plowed soil has softer soil and better entropy retention, while unploughed land cannot store rainwater. In this case, someone will definitely suffer, and there will definitely be disputes and conflicts.
And if we say that we have agreed to farm one acre for each, the land plots are not the standard one-acre fields. Most of the land plots are several acres connected together. It will be troublesome for whoever has big land and who has small land.
This is still a disagreement about plowing the land. There are more differences when it comes to sowing seeds, weeding, watering, etc.
Regardless of whether the campers wanted it or not, Li Mengxi directly issued an order on the spot, ordering the villagers to be divided into groups of 20, and the land of the 20 people to be merged into public land. When the year's work is over,
When there is grain in the field, it belongs to twenty people.
This is where collective work begins.
From June until the next year's grain harvest, there will be a whole year to gradually implement the collective model.
Chapter completed!