Agriculture conservation practices such as minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil covering by crop residues or cover crops, and crop rotations leads to higher farm productivity. Although conservation agriculture has been adopted in India since its inception, it has now been successfully used in Indo Gangetic Plains irrigated rice-wheat cropping systems and has recently been made known in parts of central India. In conservation agricultural system, cover crops play an important role in weed control, but their adoption level is still limited Changes in tillage practices, planting schemes, and other management techniques can change the soil environment and trigger a significant change in weed flora In intense tillage operations early season weed control could be obtained by turning the soil, which disrupts the germination of weed seeds and the growth of seedlings through burial. In addition, soil-administered herbicides that do not need to be manifested can have less persistence and efficacy in the presence of plant residues that can hinder and bind the chemical before it reaches the soil surface. Selective herbicide compounds that are effective on weed species and not on a specific crop, conferring non-selective herbicide tolerance on a crop may be enormously effectual for potent weed control.

There are several factors affecting the growth of maize; however, the optimum date of sowing is important for maize so that the crop grown can complete its life cycle under optimum environmental conditions and managing the fertilizer is one of the most important factors affecting maize growth. A field experiment was conducted to study the “effect of sowing dates and fertility levels on growth of Baby corn (Zea mays L.) under temperate condition” during Kharif 2018. The experiment comprised of two factors with four sowing dates viz., 18th  Standard Meteorological Week ((SMW) (30th April - 6th May)), 21st SMW (21st May – 27th May), 24th SMW (11th June – 17th June) and 27th SMW (2nd July – 8th July) as main plot treatments and four fertility levels viz., unfertilized control (F0), 100:50:25 N:P2O5:K2O kg ha-1 (F1), 120:60:30 N:P2O5:K2O kg ha-1 (F2) and 140:70:35 N:P2O5:K2O kg ha-1 (F3) as sub-plot treatments laid out in split plot design with three replications. The results of the experiment revealed that growth baby corn was significantly influenced by sowing dates and fertility levels, among different sowing dates, 18th SMW (Standard Meteorological Week) recorded significantly higher growth and among different fertility levels F3 fertility level (140:70:35 N: P2O5: K2O kg ha-1) recorded significantly higher growth than other fertility levels.