The thinking behind it
Nothing here was planted at random
Which tree went on which side, why the pits were dug a fortnight early, and what the sensors in this ground are for.
Why the sun decided the layout
The farm sits in the northern hemisphere, so the sun tracks across the southern sky. Everything about the planting plan follows from that one fact. A tall tree on the southern edge would throw its shadow into the field for most of the day. The same tree on the northern edge throws its shadow outwards, onto the road.
So the tall timber went north, the short fruit went south, and the two remaining sides were given the jobs that suited them. This was set out in the farm's planting plan — दिशावार रोपण नक्शा, the direction-wise planting map — before a single pit was dug.
North · 43 positions
Tall timber
The sun comes from the south, so tall trees here cast their shade away from the field, never onto the crop. It is the only side where you can let a tree grow as large as it likes — which makes it the right place for valuable timber.
Sheesham 28 · Neem 8 · Sagwan 5
South · 38 positions
Short fruit only
A tall tree on this edge would shade the whole field. So only short-statured fruit is allowed here — and short fruit has a second advantage: guava and lemon start paying their way within two or three years, long before any timber does.
Guava 13 · Ber 9 · Lemon 9 · Moringa 7
East · 17 positions
The big fruit
The east edge catches gentle morning sun and is sheltered from the harsh afternoon. That is the kindest light a fruit tree can get, so this is where the signature crop goes — the trees meant to still be bearing in fifty years.
Mango 9 · Jackfruit 2 · Amla 2 · Jamun 2
West · 11 positions
Wind and nitrogen
The cold season wind arrives from the west. These trees stand in its way. They were also chosen because they are nitrogen fixers: bacteria on their roots pull nitrogen from the air, so this row quietly fertilises the field every year for nothing.
Neem 5 · Karanj 4 · Guava 1
The plan was written before the saplings were sourced, and a few species changed along the way. The species changed — the logic did not. Every tree went to the side that needed the job it does.
Why the big trees are spaced apart
The pits were dug about ten feet apart. That is comfortable for a guava or a lemon, which never grow very wide. It is far too close for a mango, a jamun or a sheesham, which will each want twenty feet or more once they are grown.
So the large species were planted every other pit, with a smaller tree in between. Walk the north boundary and you will see it: sheesham, sheesham, neem, sheesham, sheesham, neem. The neem is not filler — it is a real tree doing a real job — but it also keeps the sheesham from ever having to compete with another sheesham for light.
If this had been ignored, the trees would look perfect for eight years and then begin strangling each other in the tenth.
How the ground was prepared
a fortnight before anyone arrived
The pits were not dug on the morning of the planting. They were opened and filled roughly two weeks earlier, and left alone. There is a reason for the wait.
Dig the pit
About two feet across and two feet deep — wide enough that the young roots meet loose, workable soil in every direction rather than hitting hard ground straight away.
Fill it with a mixture, not with the soil that came out
Topsoil, well-rotted cow dung (20 kg to a pit), neem cake, and a little single super phosphate for the fruit trees. The subsoil that came out of the hole is the least fertile part of the profile — putting it back around the roots would be a wasted opportunity.
Neem cake against termites
500 g for a small tree, 1 kg for a large one, mixed thoroughly through the fill rather than dropped in a layer. Termites are the commonest killer of young saplings in this region, and neem cake discourages them without poisoning anything.
Then wait a fortnight
This is the step people skip. Fresh fill is full of air and settles as it wets. If you plant into it immediately, the sapling sinks over the following weeks and ends up too deep, with its collar buried — a slow way to kill a tree. Two weeks of rain and gravity settle the mixture, and the manure finishes breaking down, so the roots meet stable, living soil.
Plant into the monsoon
Mid-August, with the rains already established. The sapling gets weeks of free water while it puts out its first roots — the difference between a tree that establishes and one that has to be nursed through its first dry season.
Water, mulch, guard, record
Water immediately, mulch with straw or leaves to hold that water, guard against grazing, and write down the species, the position and the date. That last step is why this website exists.
The instruments on the table
what the students handled on the day
Before the planting, the students spent the morning with working sensors — the same components that will go into the ground here. The point was not the electronics. It was that a number on a screen begins as a physical thing happening in the soil.
How the monitoring will work
The plan is a small solar-powered station on the higher ground, reading the soil every fifteen minutes. That is 96 readings a day from one sensor, and about 35,000 in a year — far more than anyone will ever read by eye, which is exactly the point at which a machine becomes useful.
Each reading is written to a card on the spot first, so nothing is lost when the network drops, then carried by radio to a server. The farm has poor coverage, so the link is a long-range low-power radio rather than WiFi, which would not reach.
Once the trees are being measured too, the two records can sit side by side: growth against soil moisture, survival against rainfall. That comparison — not the sensors themselves — is the actual research, and it is what makes 109 trees on a boundary into a dataset.
This part is still being built. As it comes online, the readings will appear on this site alongside each tree — starting with soil moisture and rainfall, which are the two that explain most of what a young tree does.