What actually raises cardamom yield

The difference between 200 kg an acre and 400 kg an acre is usually settled months before anyone picks anything. It is not a new chemical that does it. It is four old things in the plot.

Shade is the first decision

Cardamom is a forest-floor plant. It wants filtered light, not direct sun. Too much shade and the leaves run long, the stems go soft and there are few panicles. Too little and the leaves scorch and the capsules stay small. Thin the canopy in a dry month, not while the plant is flowering.

Spacing you cannot fix later

Two to two and a half metres between plants. Crowded clumps compete with each other for light and for feed, and a crowded row is where azhukal walks from one plant to the next. Once it is planted the spacing is fixed, so take your time putting new suckers in.

The water has to leave

Two or three days of water standing at the base after heavy rain is all rhizome rot needs. Open the drains before the monsoon starts, and cut them across the slope rather than down it. This costs nothing and saves more plants than anything else on this page.

Feed in parts, not all at once

Several small applications across the season beat one large one — the rest washes away in the rain. Cow dung and compost help the soil hold water. There is only one way to know how much you need, and that is a soil test.

No quantity for a fertiliser or a spray appears anywhere on this page. That number depends on your soil test and on the label of the product in your hand. Ask the krishi bhavan, or somebody who can stand in your plot and look at it.

Write down what you did

Nobody remembers correctly, a year later, why one block did better than another. Which day, how many kilos, how many labourers, what it cost — write that much down and next season is not guesswork.