How to Grow Sesame Well: A Detailed Guide to Key Cultivation Techniques
I think everyone is very familiar with sesame. It is a fairly nutritious food, and many people like to eat it. In daily life, many people like to eat sesame paste and sesame butter. Sesame has many uses and can also be made into all kinds of snacks, all of which are very popular.
What Is Sesame
Sesame, also known as zhi ma or hu ma (scientific name: Sesamum indicum), is the seed of the sesame plant, an annual upright herbaceous plant that grows 60-150 cm tall. It is found throughout the world's tropical regions and some temperate regions. Sesame is one of China's main oilseed crops and has high practical value. Its seeds have an oil content of up to 55%. Since ancient times, China has had many kinds of foods and delicious dishes made with sesame and sesame oil, which have long been renowned throughout the world.
How to Grow Sesame Well
1. Choose good land and prepare it well. Mainly choose sandy loam plots with medium fertility, good drainage and high terrain, and carry out autumn plowing to 20-25 cm, autumn harrowing, do a good job of preserving autumn soil moisture and spring moisture retention, form ridges, and press them in time, with a ridge width of 60 cm.
2. Fertilize reasonably. Because sesame has shallow roots, reasonable fertilization is especially important. To ensure it does not age prematurely throughout its whole growth period, apply more than 2500 kg of high-quality farmyard manure per mu, apply 5 kg of diammonium phosphate and 2 kg of potassium sulfate per mu at sowing, and apply 10 kg of urea per mu as a topdressing at the early flowering stage.
3. Appropriately increase density to ensure increased yield of the population. Change the previous narrow sowing width to a wide sowing width, keep staggered seedlings, and maintain 20,000-25,000 plants per mu.
4. Sow carefully to ensure full stands. Because sesame seeds are small and have weak ability to push through the soil, maintaining a full stand is difficult. Therefore, precise sowing to ensure a full stand in one sowing is an important link in achieving high yield. Under the premise of fine land preparation, in early May first use a cultivator-harrow to open a 3-5 cm deep furrow, then apply sufficient base fertilizer, then use a winnowing basket or rake to break up and level the soil in the furrow, then sow, then drag a wooden board over once to cover with about 3 cm of soil, and after the surface soil turns slightly white and dries, press 1-2 times. When soil moisture is poor, wait for rain before sowing, and never sow too deep, otherwise a full stand cannot be ensured.
5. Strengthen field management to ensure uniform and strong seedlings. Sesame grows slowly at the seedling stage and does not develop vigorously, and it is prone to weeds, so field management is very important. When it grows to 1-2 pairs of true leaves, thin and retain seedlings in time, and carry out early hoeing and early cultivating to raise soil temperature and promote root development. When there are 3-4 pairs of true leaves, thin and finalize the seedlings in time. When thinning and finalizing seedlings, use a small hoe to pass through the seedlings and loosen the soil, and carry out timely cultivating after hoeing. Combined with topdressing, earth up the soil to prevent lodging, and always pay attention to preventing and controlling aphids. Around mid-August, carry out overall topping to increase seed maturity. Increase the 1000-grain weight.
6. Harvest at the right time to ensure high yield and high efficiency. Sesame does not mature uniformly, and after maturity a few capsules at the bottom crack open and drop seeds. For this reason, harvest appropriately early. When most leaves turn yellow and fall off and 2% of capsules have split open, that is the harvest period. Only in this way can there be a bumper harvest, achieving the idea of harvesting at nine-tenths maturity to get a full ten-tenths yield.
Do the above six points well, and growing sesame well is not difficult.
Timely Sowing of Sesame
1. Sowing time: The suitable sowing period for summer sesame is late May to early June. The suitable sowing period for autumn sesame is early to mid-July, and under conditions with better heat it can be delayed until late July.
2. Seed rate per mu: 400 grams for broadcasting, 350 grams for drilling, and 250 grams for dibbling. In fields with high soil fertility, few pests and diseases, and high water content, sowing can be appropriately reduced.
3. Sowing methods: There are three sowing methods for sesame: dibbling, broadcasting and drilling. Broadcasting is the traditional sowing method in the Jianghuai region and is suitable for sowing when seizing soil moisture. When broadcasting, the seeds are evenly scattered and covered with shallow soil, so seedlings emerge quickly, but it is not conducive to field management. Drilling can control row and plant spacing, implement rational close planting, and facilitate field management such as thinning and intertillage, and is suitable for mechanized operation. For dibbling, sow 5-7 seeds per hole. Regardless of the sowing method, shallow sowing and even sowing with a depth of 2-3 cm are appropriate.
Field Management of Sesame
1. Chemical weeding: 3 days after sowing, use 60 ml of 60% acetochlor emulsifiable concentrate per mu, dilute with 50 kg of water, and spray evenly on the bed surface to reduce weed growth.
2. Timely thinning: After more than ten days, when 2-3 cotyledons have grown, thin the seedlings, and thin again after 5-6 days, so that the plant spacing is 22-24 cm, with 8,000-10,000 plants per mu. Suitable plant spacing is beneficial for branching.
3. Remove the terminal bud: After the full fruiting stage, when the leaf nodes at the top of the main stem cluster and growth has nearly stopped, choose a sunny morning to remove the terminal bud. The topping method is very simple, namely pinching off within 1 cm of the apical growing point is appropriate, but topping is limited only to the apical growing point, not a long section at the top. Pinching too much will reduce the number of capsules per plant, leading to reduced yield.
4. Irrigation and drainage: Sesame is most sensitive to soil moisture. It fears waterlogging and is not tolerant of long-term drought, so attention must be paid to irrigation and drainage.
Sesame cultivation is relatively common in the north. The most important thing in growing sesame is field management. Timely weeding, watering and sowing are all very important. Only by increasing its yield can you obtain your own returns.