The Latest Millet Planting Techniques and Methods Tutorial

Millet is also called foxtail millet, and is the result of removing the husk from foxtail millet grain; foxtail millet is a cereal plant, a type of grass, native to the Yellow River basin of northern China, and later spread to various places where it is grown to varying degrees; millet comes in white, red, yellow, black, orange and purple colors and can be used to make liquor, but is mainly used to make porridge.

Millet planting techniques follow pollution-free green food production procedures, with the technical route: crop rotation and stubble changing → fine land preparation → fertilization → seed selection → seed treatment → sowing → field management → harvest and storage → packaging and transport.

Crop rotation and stubble changing

Millet should not be grown on the same land repeatedly; continuous cropping in one field leads to severe disease, many weeds, and heavy consumption of soil nutrients, easily causing “soil exhaustion”. Therefore, choosing a reasonable crop rotation and stubble change makes it easy to achieve a bumper millet harvest. The preceding crops more suitable for millet are, in order, beans, potato, sweet potato, wheat, corn, and so on. To support “millet zha” production, it is planned to rotate buckwheat and waxy corn with millet.

Fine land preparation

Deep plowing in autumn can mature the soil, improve soil structure and enhance water retention capacity. Deepening the plow layer helps millet roots penetrate downward, making the plants grow robustly and thus increasing yield. Autumn deep plowing is generally more than 20 cm; it is best to apply base fertilizer in one application together with autumn plowing. Therefore, in autumn land preparation, deep plowing and moisture conservation must be done well to ensure the moisture needed for millet germination and emergence.

Fertilization

Base fertilizer is applied in one application before sowing together with deep plowing and land preparation, generally mainly farmyard manure; for high-yield fields, 75,000 to 112,000 kg/hm2 is suitable, and for medium-yield fields, 22,000 to 60,000 kg/hm2. Mixing phosphate fertilizer with farmyard manure and composting it as base fertilizer gives the best effect. Base fertilizer is best applied in autumn or early spring.

Seed fertilizer has been widely used in millet production as an important yield-increasing measure. Using nitrogen fertilizer as seed fertilizer can generally increase yield by about 10%, but the amount should not be too much. When ammonium sulfate is used as seed fertilizer, 37.5 kg/hm2 is suitable, and urea at 11.3 to 15 kg/hm2 is suitable.

The period when topdressing has the greatest yield-increasing effect is the booting stage 15 to 20 days before heading, and generally about 75 kg/hm2 of pure nitrogen is suitable. When there is more nitrogen fertilizer, apply “seed-setting fertilizer” at the beginning of jointing and topdress “grain-promoting fertilizer” at the booting stage. In the later growth period of millet, spraying phosphate fertilizer and trace element fertilizers on the leaves can also promote flowering, seed setting and grain filling.

Sowing

1. Selecting improved varieties and seed treatment: The improved varieties selected are mainly “Huangping waxy millet”, “Shibing red millet” and “local waxy millet”. In addition, varieties from outside the province such as “Dungu No. 1”, “Yugu No. 5”, “Yugu No. 7”, “Yugu No. 9”, “Qinzhou yellow millet” and “Jilin green millet” can be chosen. Before sowing, millet seeds are treated; the treatment methods include sunning the seeds, soaking the seeds, chemical seed dressing and seed coating. Chemical seed dressing can prevent and control smut and underground pests, etc.      

2. Sowing period and sowing method: Sowing at the right time is one of the important measures to ensure high and stable millet yields. Generally, sowing from early April to early May (around Grain Rain) is suitable. Sowing methods include furrow sowing, flat cropping and ridge cropping. Furrow sowing, also called ridge-furrow or flat-furrow planting, is used more on dry sloping land; its advantages are water conservation, fertilizer conservation and soil conservation.

3. Sowing rate and density: The millet sowing rate is generally about 0.8 to 1.0 kg/mu, with a depth of 3 to 5 cm. On dry land, about 40,000 to 50,000 plants per mu are generally retained.

Field management

1. Ensuring a full stand: Millet grains are relatively small and the seeds do not contain much energy material; if drought occurs, it easily causes missing plants and gaps in the field, so field management should be strengthened. Generally, when 2 to 3 leaves have emerged, check the seedlings and replant missing ones, and when 5 to 6 leaves have emerged, thin and set the seedlings.

2. Seedling hardening to promote vigor: In fields with good water and fertilizer conditions and vigorous seedling growth, seedling hardening should be carried out in time. The main methods of seedling hardening are timely control of fertilizer and water at the 2 to 3 leaf stage, deep intertillage, and so on.

3. Intertillage and weeding: Millet intertillage management is mostly carried out at the seedling stage, jointing stage and booting stage, generally 2 to 3 times. The first intertillage is carried out together with thinning and setting the seedlings, using the techniques of shallow hoeing, breaking up soil clods finely and clearing weeds. The second intertillage is during the jointing period and is carried out together with irrigation and topdressing. The intertillage should be deep, and soil should be banked up at the same time. The third intertillage is carried out before the rows close, and the intertillage depth is generally 4 to 5 cm. In addition to loosening the soil and weeding, high banking should also be carried out to promote root development and prevent lodging.

4. Pest and disease control

① Select disease-resistant (tolerant) varieties or disease-free improved seeds: At present, varieties resistant to millet rust include “Huangping waxy millet”, “Shibing red millet” and “local waxy millet”, as well as varieties from outside the province such as “Dungu No. 1”, “Yugu No. 9”, “Qinzhou yellow millet” and “Jilin green millet”. Varieties also resistant to millet sheath blight include “Yugu No. 14” and “Yute No. 5”. When smut occurs, in fields that are disease-free or have mild disease, selecting disease-free heads as seed before harvest has a certain control effect on smut.

② Seedling-stage control: After millet seedlings are set, if drought occurs, to prevent spider mites from growing and reproducing rapidly, use dicofol spray for control. If there is continuous rain and high field humidity, to prevent the reproduction of the millet stem maggot, pyrethroid insecticides should be used for spray control.

③ Adult-plant-stage control: After millet heads, in early to mid-August, it is exactly the growth and reproduction period of the third generation of armyworms; at this time pay attention to inspection, and if armyworms are found, promptly use DDV emulsion for control. If there is continuous rain during the adult plant stage of millet and the climate is humid, millet is not resistant to rust; when the diseased leaf rate is 1% to 5%, promptly use chemical protection methods such as triadimefon diluted with water for spray control. In late July, if there are many cloudy and rainy days, cloud-like lesions easily appear on the base of millet stems, and validamycin or jinggangmycin should be used for spray control.