Learn How To Grow Sesame Plant In The Perfect Way

Given the tasty staple sesame seeds are, you would surely want to learn how to grow sesame plants by your efforts and harvest the seeds. It can be a little challenging process but will give amazingly rewarding results. Let’s move to telling you what all needs to be done for growing sesame.

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About the sesame plant

Also known as Sesamum indicum, the plant belongs to the Pedaliaceae family. It has a pivotal root and a straight stem covered in dense bristles which also cover the leaves. The capsule like fruit yields oval and tiny seeds that are of various colors.

Sesame is a great agricultural crop due to its qualities like easy growing, high adaptability to tropical and temperate climates, and other minimal requirements.

The seeds of the plants come into major use for oil extraction, bakery products, and other food items. Roasted or raw seeds have also got a high value in the organic or bio food industry. They are also used by the pharmaceutical industries in making of bathing products.

Important aspects related to sesame cultivation

Here is a quick go through of the points to remember before you know how to grow sesame.

Sesame has a very high tolerance against drought. However, it can use some water to produce more amounts of seeds.
The right weather for sesame is a dry and hot one.
The plant is not hardy and slows or stops the growth naturally once the temperature goes down.
The plant needs ample sunlight to grow.
Fertile soil mediums with a rich texture are great for sesame crop. It must be well-drained. The sandy-loamy soil is the perfect choice and it must be clean.
It is possible to include sesame in crop rotation with other crops like cereals, corn, millets, etc.
You must try not to harvest various types of sesame seeds together to keep the quality of the final seeds even.

Growing the sesame plants

This is the second stage of how to grow sesame and there are two for growing the sesame crop.

Starting the seeds indoors

This is the better way to go about growing sesame because the seeds directly sown outside don’t generally do well.

The right time to start the seeds is around 4-6 weeks prior to the date of the last frost. You have to take the same time gap before you transplant the seedlings outside after the last freeze. You have to check the conditions of the local climate for these calculations.

You can use sterilized starter mixes or any light soil for sowing the soils in and then cover them lightly. The seeds have to be kept warm and the ideal temperature to be maintained is 21 Celsius (70 degrees F). You just have to keep the seeds adequately moist until germination and water only once a week post-sprouting.

As the weather turns warm, move the seedlings out and sow into drained and warm beds (raised beds preferably). Sesame does well in dry and warm conditions and you can cover the crop if it is still cold. Make sure to choose a location for the crop where it is sunny.

Space the plants at about 15 cm and the rows can be around 60 cm wide.

Planting the seeds directly

You can opt for this method if you see that the required conditions are all met. The initial growth of the crop is going to be slow and thus you must prepare the environment well.

The first thing to do is soil treatment where you have to do certain things like-

Making it weed free either manually or through fertilizer treatment
Use manure fed soil previously used for cereals, legumes, etc.
Creating a leveled and loosened ground
Weed, harrow, or plough the soil as per need
Make the soil soft

You may have to use special machinery for sowing the sesame seeds 2-3cm deep into the soil bed with the rows at a gap of around 45 cm from each other. Around 7-8 kg of seeds is put in one hectare of the ground. It is important to roll the soil lightly after the seeds are sown if it’s a dry soil.

Use fertilizer rich in potash, nitrogen, and phosphate, farm manure, and compost to feed the crop. Maintain the water supply enough to avoid water logging or high humidity that can damage the young sesame plant.

You can grow sesame in pots too and watch this video to know more.

Harvesting sesame

This is the last lesson in your learning about how to grow sesame.

Sesame plants continue to flower throughout the summers where they begin forming the seed pods by the end of it. These pods ripe and split away at the blossom end.

You can harvest these pods and lay them flat for drying. They will continue splitting and then just hit them against any container to collect the seeds into it.

For the sesame grown in the fields may not show the same phenomenon. It usually takes around 90-130 days for them to become harvest-ready. You may have to cut the base of the stems and then hang-dry them at a suitable place to let the seeds fall out of the dried pods naturally.

Additional care

Though sesame plants need very less after-care, there are certain things that you can take care of to ensure a healthy harvest.

Controlling weeds is very important and you can take care of this during soil preparation itself and then some time after sowing at regular intervals. Bacterial blight, fungus, root rot, Sesamum phyllody, mildew are some common disease and pests that affect sesame and you must be careful with them.

Conclusion

Now that you know all about how to grow sesame, you can begin when the time is right. The harvest is going to be a delight and there is a lot that you can do with including making nutritious oil for cooking or skin care, bakery products, or the very popular Tahini paste.

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