Planting the Short Rains: Timing, Seed Rate, Spacing and the Gap-Filling Window

The first real storm of the short rains arrives in the afternoon, and by evening every farm on the hill is talking about planting. Some will be in the field at dawn with seed in their pockets. Some will wait a week to be sure. A few planted dry a fortnight ago and are now hoping. Three months later, the difference between those farms will be standing in the field for anyone to read: even stands and full cobs on one side of the boundary, gaps, late plants and thin heads on the other.

The short rains are less forgiving than the long rains in much of Kenya. In many maize and bean areas they are shorter and less certain, so the crop has less time to make up for a slow start. That makes the first two weeks of the season the most important fortnight of the whole crop: when to plant, how much seed to buy, how to lay out the rows, how to run the planting team, and how quickly to fill the gaps.

This guide is about that fortnight. It does not repeat how a jab planter works or where starter fertiliser must sit; our guide to hand seed planters and fertiliser applicators covers the tool in detail, and our land preparation checklist covers the work before this. Here we deal with timing, seed arithmetic, layout and the follow-up that turns a planted field into an even stand. Treat every spacing and rate below as general guidance, and take the final figures for your variety from the seed pack and your county extension officer.

Reading the Planting Rain, Not the Calendar

Seed needs moisture to germinate and then more moisture to keep the seedling alive while its roots go down. A single heavy storm can wet the top few centimetres and leave dry soil underneath. Seed planted into that thin wet layer swells, starts to germinate, and dies if the next rain is a week away. This false start is the most common way short-rains crops are lost before they are seen.

A practical field test settles the question better than the date or the neighbour. Dig a small hole with a jembe in two or three places across the field the morning after rain. If the soil is moist and dark all the way down to roughly the depth of your hand, around 15 centimetres, there is enough water stored to carry the seedling through a short dry spell. If moist soil gives way to dry, dusty soil after a few centimetres, wait for the next rain. This is a rule of thumb, not a measurement, but it is far better than planting on the strength of one wet afternoon.

Once the soil passes the test, speed matters. The earliest well-planted fields use the whole of a short season, flower before the rains tail off, and fill their grain while moisture is still in the soil. Every day of delay after a genuine planting rain shortens that window. The aim is to have every seed in the ground within a few days of the first proper rain, which is why the seed, the tools and the people must be ready before the season breaks, not bought or booked after it.

Variety choice follows from the same logic. Where the short rains are brief or unreliable, extension advice in many counties leans towards earlier-maturing maize varieties and suitable bean varieties for the season, because a crop that needs four months of rain in an area that reliably gets three will run out of water at grain fill. Ask your agro-dealer and your ward extension officer which varieties are recommended for your area and for this season specifically, and buy certified seed from a sealed pack rather than saved hybrid grain, which does not breed true.

Seed Arithmetic: How Much Seed an Acre Really Needs

Seed rate is spacing turned into kilogrammes. Decide the spacing, work out how many planting holes fit on an acre, multiply by the seeds per hole, and then convert the seed count into weight using the size of the seed you are buying. An acre is about 4,047 square metres, so the number of holes is simply 4,047 divided by the area each hole occupies.

For maize, a spacing widely used in Kenyan extension material is 75 centimetres between rows and 25 centimetres between holes, one seed per hole. Each hole then occupies 0.75 by 0.25 metres, or 0.1875 square metres, which gives about 21,600 holes per acre. An alternative used in some areas is 75 by 50 centimetres with two seeds per hole, which gives the same number of plants with half the number of holes, and so half the jabbing. Wider rows, such as 90 centimetres, suit drier areas where fewer plants share the water.

For beans in a pure stand, a commonly quoted spacing is around 50 centimetres between rows and 10 to 15 centimetres between seeds. At 50 by 10 centimetres that is about 80,900 seeds per acre, and at 50 by 15 about 54,000. Beans need far more seeds than maize, and the seed is heavier per plant than most farmers expect.

To turn seed counts into kilogrammes you need the weight of the seed, and that varies a great deal between varieties and between small-seeded and large-seeded beans. As a worked example only: if 1,000 maize seeds of your variety weigh 350 grammes, then 21,600 seeds weigh about 7.6 kilogrammes. If 100 bean seeds weigh 40 grammes, then 80,900 seeds weigh about 32 kilogrammes. Count and weigh 100 seeds from your own pack on a kitchen scale and you can do this sum exactly for the seed you actually bought.

Then add a margin. Some seed will not germinate, some will be taken by birds, rodents or cutworms, and you will want seed of the same variety in hand for gap filling a week after emergence. Buying exactly the bare count leaves nothing for that. The germination percentage printed on certified seed packs tells you how much extra to allow, and the seed pack or agro-dealer will give the recommended rate per acre for that variety, which already includes a sensible allowance.

Maize and Beans Together: Laying Out an Intercrop

Many smallholders plant beans between the maize rows rather than in a separate plot, and the short rains are when this matters most for household food. The common layout keeps the maize at its usual row spacing and puts one row of beans midway between each pair of maize rows. The beans grow early and low, the maize grows tall and later, and the two share the field without one smothering the other if the spacing is respected.

The intercrop changes the seed sum. In this layout the beans are one row in every 75 centimetres instead of one row in every 50, so the bean seed needed per acre is lower than for a pure stand at the same in-row spacing. Work it out the same way: 4,047 divided by 0.75 metres between bean rows and by the in-row spacing gives the bean seed count for the intercropped acre.

Plant both crops on the same day where you can, or the beans within a few days of the maize. Beans planted long after the maize sit in shade and yield little. Keep starter fertiliser for each crop at the rate your extension officer recommends, and place it the way our planter guide describes, away from direct seed contact.

Marking Rows Before the Seed Comes Out

Rows decide everything that follows: how fast you can weed, whether the top dressing lands where the roots are, and whether you can count your population after emergence. They are also the step most often skipped in the rush of a planting morning. Set them out the day before, or at first light, so the planting team never has to stop and guess.

• Set a baseline. Stretch a measuring tape along one edge of the field and peg the start of every row at the row spacing. On a slope, run that baseline along the contour so that rows run across the slope, never up and down it.
• Use a marked line for the in-row spacing. A length of rope or wire with a knot or a strip of cloth tied at every 25 centimetres, or whatever in-row spacing you chose, stretched between two pegs, lets anyone plant a straight, evenly spaced row without measuring each hole.
• Mark the next row from this one. A stick cut to exactly the row spacing, laid from each peg, sets the next line without walking back to the baseline.
• Mark the bean rows too. If you are intercropping, peg the bean row halfway between maize rows at the same time, so beans are not dropped wherever there seems to be room.

On ground that has been well prepared, a jab planter run along a marked line places seed and fertiliser at a consistent depth, station after station, while the line keeps the spacing honest. On rough or hard ground a jembe and a marked line still beat seed dropped by eye. The tool matters less than the discipline of the line.

Running the Planting Day Like a Small Production Line

A planting day goes wrong in predictable ways: the seed runs out halfway down a row, fertiliser is left in a hopper at lunch and cakes, two people plant the same row twice, or the field is finished but nobody remembers where the bean seed ran short. A little organisation stops all of this.

Split the work by job. One person moves and re-sets the marked lines. Planters work one row each, following the line. One person carries seed and fertiliser to the planters so that nobody walks back to the store. If you are using jab planters, calibrate each one before the first row with twenty jabs onto a sack, as our planter guide explains, and recalibrate if the seed batch or fertiliser bag changes. If two people are planting by hand, give each a small container measured to hold the seed for one row, so a shortfall shows up at the end of that row and not at the end of the field.

At the end of the day, empty and wash the fertiliser side of every planter and applicator, record which rows were planted with which seed lot, and note the date. Those notes are what let you judge emergence fairly a week later and decide whether a gap is a germination problem, a pest problem or a planting error.

Gap Filling and Thinning: The Window Is Short

A week or so after planting, walk the rows and count. Seedlings should be coming up evenly along the marked lines. Where a station is empty, find out why before you replant: dig gently for the seed. A seed that rotted points to planting into soil that was too wet or seed that was poor; a seedling cut at the base points to cutworms; scratched-out holes point to birds or rodents. Each cause has a different fix, and replanting without one just feeds the same pest twice.

Fill gaps quickly, with seed of the same variety, into moist soil. A widely used rule of thumb is to finish gap filling within about a week to ten days of the main emergence. After that, the replacement seedling comes up under neighbours that are already well ahead, competes poorly for light, and in maize often ends up as a barren stalk that used water and fertiliser and gave nothing back. If you miss the window, it can be better to leave the gap than to fill it late; an intercropped bean or a legume can use the space instead.

Thinning is the opposite job. Where you planted two seeds per hole and both came up in a spacing designed for one, or where seed was dropped in clusters, pull the extra seedlings while they are small and the soil is moist, so the roots of the keeper are not torn. Keep the strongest plant and remove the rest. Thinned maize seedlings can sometimes be used to fill nearby gaps if moved with a ball of soil on a cloudy day, but a fresh seed of the same variety is the more reliable choice.

Tools for the Planting Fortnight, With Prices

None of the work above needs a tractor. It needs a few hand tools that are ready, clean and calibrated before the rains break. These are current prices from the Fuga price list; confirm stock with the team before you travel.

The double barrel seed planter places seed and starter fertiliser in one jab, the fertiliser applicator handles top dressing later in the season, and a jembe does the moisture test, the gap filling and the closing of holes. A measuring tape and a knotted line set out the rows. Between them, they turn the first fortnight from a scramble into a routine.

The short rains reward the farmer who is ready on the day the soil is. Test the moisture, do the seed sum, mark the rows, plant fast, and walk the field a week later with seed still in your pocket. If you need planters, applicators or hand tools before the season breaks, talk to any Fuga branch or WhatsApp 0716 961 018 and we will help you match the tools to your acreage.

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