27 March 2025, Tsirang: Sergithang Gewog, Tsirang Dzongkhag started producing early Bhutanese Chilli since 2018, and it has been remained first big Bhutanese chilli producing gewog in the country.
Initially it started growing with a few potential farmers with the idea to create the doors of opportunities after paddy harvest. The households were basically selected based on their progressiveness with the hope to showcase as a trial for the promotion. They were fed technically with the recommendations and liaised with Dzongkhag for the possible supports. As a hadoc, we could help few sheets of poly tunnel and plastic mulch in the startup of 5 acres.
Nursery started right after paddy harvest using poly tunnels. It is used to preserve heat and moisture in extreme cold that the area experiences. The raised bed of 15cm nearby courtyard at sunny places is mostly prioritized to ease management and encourage microbial activities. The seeds purchased from NSC. It is usually shown in lines for easy weeding besides maintaining health of the seedlings. However, the nursery seeds are sometimes treated with hot water, soaking to eliminate fungal and bacterial infection. The beds are applied and mixed thoroughly
with chicken manure.
In the process of raising nursery farmer starts preparing field with at least thrice ploughs or machine ploughs with significant gap to reduce cut worms infestation and other soil borne infection. Most probably the area owned each power tiller at each individual household. Some farmers even mulched the beds for solarization prior to a month to ease infections.
The fields are not treated with any kinds of inorganic fertilizer; instead we use plenty of chicken manure and cow urine dilution. The price of chicken manure has seen skyrocketing with higher demand for the use in chilli cultivation. This year, the price has reached at Nu.200 per 50kg bags.
The manure are even importing from the other gewog with the insufficient supply of available poultry farm in the gewog.
Of course farmer tethers cattle however at the end, the fields are incorporated with huge quantity of chicken manure.
The beds are a prepared using bed maker which is supplied by the Dzongkhag under RGoB funding for only chilli cultivation. The machine is operated by the trained operator, who handles cash hiring collection and deposit in the account. The amount is basically used for operator payment at Nu.300 per hour, other machine parts purchase and fueling. As per the farmers’ statement, machine is worth for hiring and encourages growers on increasing areas under chilli cultivation, otherwise it is impossible to manage bed making in crisis of farm labour at a time of planting at the same time.
