The natural vegetable fiber jute, is sown normally in the month between March to May, depending upon the type of land and rainfall. The harvesting of jute is done, between the month of Jute to September, depending upon the early or late sowing. This fiber needs warm and humid climate with temperature between 24° C to 37° C.

Jute sowing
Appropriate jute is grown usually in clay loams or sand loams. The water logging and continuous rain can be harmful for growing jute. The gray colored alluvial soil, having salts of annual floods, is best for jute fiber. Normally, the sowing of jute in high lands and mid lands starts with the showers in the month of March or April, then continues till June in the western area of jute belt. The fertilizers used are phosphorus, potash, firm yard or compost manure and nitrogen fertilizers. Inter culturing also plays a vital role while sowing of jute.

Accumulation of jute
Jute is plucked at any time from 120 to 150 days, when the flowers have been shed. Early harvesting always render good and healthy jute fibers. The collected plants are left in the field for around 3 days, for the leaves to shed and afterwards stems are made up in bundles for steeping in water. The process of steeping is conducted immediately after the harvesting process.

Extraction of jute fiber
For extracting the jute fibers from the stem, whole procedure is carried out in different steps as the fibers lie behind the bark, covering the woody central part of stem. The several stages which cover the entire procedure of jute fiber extraction are :

• Collection : Firstly, the jute fibers are collected in a bundle stalk.
• Retting : The tied jute bundles are taken to the tank where fibers get loosened and separated from the woody stalk. These bundles are steeped in water at least 60 cm to 100 cm depth. The process takes around 8 to 30 days. Now, the barks are easily separated out from the stick or wood.
• Stripping : In this process, the fibers are removed from the stalk. You can remove them either by washing stalks in waist deep water and then stripping afterwards/ taking off the fibers of each single plant/ by taking handful of stalks in to and fro motion in the water.
• Washing : The extracted fibers are washed in clean water. If the fibers have dark color, this color can be removed by dipping fibers in tamarind water for 15 to 20 minutes.
• Squeezing and drying : After squeezing extra water from the fibers, they are hang on bamboo railing for sun drying for 2 to 3 days.
• Bailing : The jute fibers are graded into tops and middles as B, C and X bottoms.
• Kutcha packing : The jute fibers are packed into kutcha bales, weighing approx 250 pounds, widely used in the home trade.
• Storage or transport : Finally they are transported direct to jute mills or jute market.