Boishakh and Joishtho are the summer months. Vegetables need special care at this time because the harsh weather harms them, so summer vegetables must be tended carefully. To get fresh vegetables, follow these rules:

• Tend summer vegetables carefully, whether in the field or in the homestead yard.
• Top-dressing of fertiliser, weeding, earthing up soil around the base or on ridges, and providing stakes or trellises (macha) for creeping vegetables are essential.
• To curb the vegetative growth of creeping vegetables, cutting back 15-20 percent of the vines and leaves will bring earlier flowers and fruit.
• Hand pollination, or artificial pollination, greatly helps raise yields in gourd-family vegetables.
• Once plants start flowering, making sure of hand pollination early every morning will raise yields a great deal.
• Fruit flies do the most damage to gourd-family crops. Setting up stakes in the field with poison bait traps on top helps, and sex pheromones can also be used to prevent attack.
• Fruit borers, aphids and various beetles can eat the green leaves of vegetables.
• Pests can be controlled by hand-picking, insect traps and ash. Cut off affected parts, and use pesticide only as a last resort.
• Give light irrigation when needed, judging the soil's moisture condition (jo), and take care to provide drainage as well.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.