Malenadu Crop Calendar

How to read this Malenadu crop calendar

This Malenadu crop calendar gives the usual month for each job, but every village runs a little early or late. Malenadu stretches from the coastal foothills near Honnavar up to cool coffee estates high in the ghats. It also runs from very wet ghat villages to drier eastern taluks.

A few simple rules explain most of the differences:

• Height: higher, cooler estates harvest later. Pepper picked in December near the coast may still be on the vine in March on a high estate.
• Rain: the wettest villages get the monsoon earlier and harder, so spraying and planting dates move with it.
• The year itself: a late monsoon or an unseasonal shower in winter can shift a harvest by weeks.

So read the Malenadu crop calendar as a guide, not a timetable. If you want to know where each taluk sits, our page on Malenadu districts and taluks is a good map to keep open alongside this Malenadu crop calendar.

Malenadu crop calendar month by month

The table below is the whole Malenadu crop calendar at a glance: one row per month, with weather, field work and the kitchen side by side. The sections after it explain each season of the Malenadu crop calendar in more detail.

Month	Weather	In the fields	In the kitchen
January	Cool, dry, misty mornings	Pepper picking in full swing. Ripe areca harvested and dried for chali. Robusta coffee picking. Turmeric digging begins. Sugarcane crushing at the aalemane	Fresh joni bella. New pepper drying on mats. Ellu bella for Sankranti
February	Dry, days warming up	Pepper ends in lower areas. Robusta coffee finishes. Turmeric boiled and dried. Kokum and mango trees in flower	Turmeric drying in yards. Last of the winter jaggery
March	Hot and humid, first thunder late in the month	Coffee blossoms after the first showers. Gardens mulched and drains cleared. Tender mangoes picked	Appe midi pickle. First tender jackfruit for palya
April	Hottest month, pre-monsoon storms	Kokum fruit ripens and is picked. Jackfruit and mango in season. Honey taken in many areas	Kokum rind drying. Kokum juice. Jackfruit happala and sandige
May	Hot and heavy, storms build up	Kokum and jackfruit at their peak. First protective spray on areca bunches. Pits dug for new plants. Turmeric planted with the first rains	Stocking up for the monsoon: firewood, pickles, happala and dried kokum
June	Southwest monsoon arrives	Paddy nurseries sown and transplanting begins. Pepper vines flower. New areca and pepper planted	Kokum saaru. Halasina kadubu from the last jackfruit. Kashaya
July	Heaviest rain of the year	Paddy transplanting finishes. Second spray on areca. Cardamom flowering	Pathrode, bamboo shoot curry, roasted jackfruit seeds. Menthya tambuli
August	Steady rain, fewer storms	Tender areca harvested for kempu adike in some areas. First cardamom pickings	Rain food continues. Kadubu for Ganesha Chaturthi in some years
September	Rain easing, sunny breaks	Cardamom picked every 15 to 25 days. Areca boiled for kempu adike. Paddy in flower	Kadubu and sweets for festivals
October	Monsoon withdraws, evening showers	Cardamom picking at its peak. Paddy ripening. Bhoomi Hunnime in the fields	Deepavali sweets with ghee and jaggery in some years
November	Cool and clear	Paddy harvest. Arabica coffee picking starts. Chali areca harvest begins. Huttari in Kodagu	New rice. Deepavali in some years
December	Coolest nights, dry	Pepper picking begins in most areas. Arabica picking continues. Robusta starts. Areca drying. Aalemane fires lit in some villages	Fresh pepper. First joni bella of the season

Festival dates on the Malenadu crop calendar follow the lunar calendar, so Deepavali can fall in October or November and Ganesha Chaturthi in August or September.

What are the Malenadu seasons?

The Malenadu seasons are simple to remember: a dry, busy winter harvest, a hot summer of fruit, a long monsoon and a short green autumn as the rain leaves. Every Malenadu crop calendar is built around the southwest monsoon, which usually arrives in early June and soaks the hills until about September.

Season	Months	What it means on the farm
Winter harvest	November to February	Pepper, coffee, areca, paddy, turmeric and jaggery
Summer	March to May	Kokum, jackfruit, mango, honey and pre-monsoon work
Monsoon	June to September	Paddy planting, spraying, new plants and rain food
After the rains	October	Cardamom peak, ripening paddy and festivals

Older families also count the monsoon by rain stars (nakshatras), each a couple of weeks long, from Mrigashira in June through Pushya, Magha and Hubba to Chitta and Swathi as the rain fades. Each rain star has its own jobs on the old Malenadu crop calendar and its own sayings. For how much rain actually falls, see our guide to the Malenadu monsoon and rainfall.

Winter: the main Malenadu harvest season

The main Malenadu harvest season runs from November to February, when the rain has gone, the air is dry and almost every crop on the farm is ready. Pepper, coffee, ripe areca, paddy, turmeric and sugarcane all come in within a few weeks of each other. On the Malenadu crop calendar these four months are the busiest of the year and every pair of hands is needed.

When is pepper harvested in Malenadu?

In most of Malenadu, pepper is harvested from about December to February. Pepper vines flower with the first monsoon showers in May and June. The berries take six to eight months to mature. Lower, warmer gardens start first. Higher estates can carry on into March.

Pickers climb bamboo ladders up the areca palms or shade trees and pluck whole spikes once one or two berries on a spike turn orange or red. The spikes are threshed and the berries spread on mats or clean yards. They dry in the sun for about a week until they turn black and wrinkled. Some fully red berries are kept aside, soaked and rubbed to make white pepper. Our page on pepper and cardamom farming covers the whole process.

What is the areca harvest time?

On the Malenadu crop calendar, areca harvest time depends on the kind of adike (ಅಡಿಕೆ) being made. For red kempu adike, tender green nuts are cut from about August and boiled, sliced and dried. In many villages of Shivamogga and Chikkamagaluru this work runs on into the cool months. For white chali, nuts are left on the palm until fully ripe and harvested from November to February.

The CPCRI arecanut calendar says chali nuts are sun dried for about 45 days in a single layer and turned every week. Read more on our guide to areca nut farming.

Coffee picking

Coffee picking is the big cool season job on the Malenadu crop calendar for estates in Chikkamagaluru, Kodagu and Hassan. According to the Coffee Board of India, Arabica is harvested from November to January and Robusta from December to February. Ripe red cherries are picked by hand, then pulped and washed or dried whole in the sun.

Sugarcane crushing and joni bella

Winter on the Malenadu crop calendar is also the season of the aalemane (ಆಲೆಮನೆ), the village jaggery shed. Cane is crushed and the juice is boiled in a wide pan over a fire fed with dried cane waste. The thick syrup is either set into blocks or kept runny as joni bella. The season usually runs from about December to February, a month either side depending on when the cane is ready.

Turmeric, paddy and the winter festivals

Turmeric planted with the first rains is ready to dig from January to March, about seven to nine months later, once the leaves turn yellow and dry. The rhizomes are boiled, dried and polished before grinding. Paddy, planted in the monsoon, is cut from about October to December.

Two festivals mark this part of the Malenadu crop calendar. Huttari, the rice harvest festival of Kodagu, falls on a full moon in late November or early December, when the first paddy stalks are cut and brought home. Makara Sankranti on 14 or 15 January is celebrated with ellu bella, a mix of sesame, jaggery, dry coconut and groundnuts shared with neighbours.

Summer: kokum season, jackfruit and mango

Summer in this Malenadu crop calendar runs from March to May and is the season of fruit. The hills are hot and sticky and the streams run low. The trees that flowered in winter now load up with kokum, jackfruit and mango.

When is kokum season?

Kokum season in Malenadu is mainly April and May, sometimes running into June in later areas. An ICAR paper in Indian Horticulture notes that kokum trees flower from December to February and the fruit is ready to harvest from April to May.

Families pick the deep purple fruits, cut them open and scoop out the seeds. The rind is then dried in the hot sun for several days, often rubbed with a little salt, until it turns dark and leathery. This is murugalu, the dried kokum that goes into saaru and curries all year. The seeds are pressed for kokum butter in some villages.

If you have a packet ready, try our recipe for kokum saaru, the everyday sour rasam of hill homes.

Jackfruit season

Jackfruit season in Malenadu runs roughly from March to June, with some trees fruiting into July. Almost every farm has a few trees. Nothing is wasted. Tender fruit goes into palya and ripe fruit is eaten fresh or ground into kadubu batter. The seeds are roasted in the hearth during the rains.

Mango, honey and getting ready for rain

On the Malenadu crop calendar, mango season peaks in April and May. Before that, in March, small tender wild mangoes called appe midi are picked for the famous Malenadu pickle, which is made in big jars to last the year.

Honey is mostly taken in the dry months of the Malenadu crop calendar, from about late winter into early summer, when the forests and gardens are in flower. The monsoon is a lean time for bees, so beekeepers leave the boxes alone and let the colonies rest. Our guide to beekeeping in Malenadu explains the bees and the boxes.

May is the month of preparation on the Malenadu crop calendar. Farmers mulch the gardens, clear drains, dig pits for new plants and give areca bunches a protective spray before the rain. At home, people stock firewood, fill jars with pickles and dried kokum and check the roofs.

Our Honey sits with our jaggery in the natural sweeteners range.

Monsoon: paddy planting and rain food

The monsoon months of June to September are the busiest planting time on the Malenadu crop calendar. Rain arrives in early June and keeps coming, often for days without a break. The fields turn green within weeks.

• Paddy: nurseries are sown with the first rains. Seedlings are transplanted into flooded fields through June and July. Transplanting is shared work, done by groups of neighbours moving from field to field.
• Areca spraying: the CPCRI calendar advises a first Bordeaux spray against fruit rot (kole roga) before or at the onset of the monsoon and a second about 40 to 45 days later.
• New plants: pepper cuttings, areca seedlings and coffee plants go in while the soil is soft.
• Spices: pepper flowers with the first rains. Cardamom flowers through the monsoon. The first capsules are ready to pick from about August.

The monsoon kitchen is the cosiest part of the Malenadu crop calendar: warm and slow. Expect menthya tambuli (a cool, curd based fenugreek dish), pathrode (steamed colocasia leaf rolls), bamboo shoot curry, roasted jackfruit seeds and endless cups of kashaya, a spiced herbal drink often made with milk.

After the rains: cardamom and Bhoomi Hunnime

October is the short, green bridge in the Malenadu crop calendar between the monsoon and the winter harvest. The southwest monsoon withdraws and evening thunder showers come and go. The paddy fields turn from green to gold.

Cardamom picking reaches its peak in October and November. Pickers go round the plants every 15 to 25 days, choosing only ripe capsules. The harvest is cured in a drying room to keep its green colour. If you cook with whole spices, our green Cardamom is worth keeping in the jar.

The month brings Bhoomi Hunnime, the full moon after Navaratri, when farming families in many Malenadu villages take food to their fields and offer it to Bhoomi Tayi, the earth, as the paddy fills with grain. Deepavali often falls in late October or early November, a time for sweets made with ghee and jaggery.

Using the Malenadu crop calendar in your kitchen

The easiest way to use this Malenadu crop calendar is to shop with the seasons: pepper and turmeric powder after winter, kokum after summer and joni bella from the winter crushing. Browse the full spices range for the rest. For the full story of each crop, the areca and pepper guides linked above go deeper.

Frequently asked questions about the Malenadu crop calendar