Smart farms

: 05 October 2021; Hits: 7655

How Limuru farmer earns Sh9,000 weekly from 40*100 managu plot

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By George Munene

On a 40*100 piece of land you can harvest up to 300 kilograms of managu every week selling at Sh30 per kilogram; this can earn you a cool Sh9000 in a week.

Having grown managus on a trial basis for home consumption at her back garden in Limuru, Mary Ikigu started commercialy farming the vegetable commercially at the beginning of the year on some 100 disused mushroom growing bags. This she attributes to having found the crop highly marketable, particularly given Kenyan’s newfound love for mboga za kienyeji and it being a resource-efficient crop in its production; does not need to be grown in specialized conditions, i.e. greenhouses, a 5000-liter water tank that ensures access to irrigation water is all Mary recommends. A farmer will also need to cost for manure and part-time employees to help with land preparation, weeding, harvesting and watering depending on the size of their farm.

With what is considered limited farming space; half an acre to 50*100 sized plots; managu farming can be a money minter given access to the right market linkages. The larger your farm size the more its harvest and profit potential. The nutrient-rich vegetable can as well be grown in vertical growing bags. A farmer she says can strategically divvy up their land into plots to make sure they have constant harvests.

“Managu is sold in markets in a bunch; a handful for about Sh10 or per kilo, with a kilogram, usually fetching Sh30-40. They are also packed and sold in sacks. As with most other crops, it is a numbers game; the more harvests you have the more you are able to sell,” Ikigu explains.

Managu prices in Kenya are usually dictated by rain patterns: they grow faster and are readily available in markets during rainy seasons; their prices are therefore lower. “You’ll sell managu for Sh2000 a sack during the dry season, over the January to March months the market has thus far been great, but the price can crater to as low as Sh500-300 when rains hit because most farmers depend on rainfed agriculture and are able to grow it as well,” the budding farmer says.

The main markets for managu in Kenya are open-air markets. These include Muthurwa, Kawangware, Kangemi where she takes her produce or has buyers come from to pick the leafy vegetable from her farm. Others are City Park in Nairobi where most buyers, some of whom are Chinese nationals, prefer improved rather than Kienyeji managu which is less bitter. Mary points out that Farmers can also target more structured markets such as learning institutions, restaurants, hospitals and mama mbogas within their locality.

African Nightshade should be harvested early in the morning or late in the evening. The crop’s leaves deteriorate easily when picked when it is sunny this makes them less appealing to buyers depreciating their value.

A crop can be continuously picked for two months, but the harvesting period can be increased by adding manure every two weeks after weeding. Ratooning; cutting off of the main stalk up to 15-20 centimeters also allows for the plant to develop new shoots extending the harvesting time. This Mary says will however also lead to reduced yield thus she opts to replace her existing crop.

From Mary’s experience, the pests affecting managu are often aphids and mealybugs. Given her crops are organically grown she tackles them using neem oil. “If your crop has suffered a pest attack you should spray them once a week. To prevent such attacks, I keep to a regiment of pro-actively spraying my vegies every two weeks,” she says. This also involves spraying them for fungal attacks; Managu are of the Solanaceae family thus are easily afflicted by late and light blight; using Regain a biological fungicide manufactured by Real IPM.

For her planting material, she sows seeds picked off her shrubs or buys them from Simlaw or Kenya seed. Managu takes 45 days to grow in her nursery and one to two and a half months before the vegetable’s first harvest depending on the level of agronomic management. Seedlings are transplanted when they are 15cm long/ after 30-45 days or when they have five true leaves. The plant distance should ideally be 30*30cm. On her vertical farm bags, Mary fits two seedlings into every bag

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Manure is essential in providing the vegetable with Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and micronutrients; managu will often naturally grow in areas that are heavily fertilised such as cowsheds. For her bags, Mary uses two buckets of chicken manure and 8 bucketfuls of cow dung.

Managu requires a moisturized environment to thrive with their quantities falling in Kenyan markets over drier months when they fetch a premium price. Watering should also be done at transplanting to improve the survival chances of the plantlets.

“The land prepared in readiness for panting should be finely tilled ensuring the soil is fine enough to hold the plant’s seedlings which are very tiny. The seedlings are encumbered in their germination by compacted soil, taking longer to grow in soils with hardpans,” she says.

Managu does best in soils with a PH of 5.5-6.8 but can grow in various soil types given proper agronomic practices are conducted, i.e, manuring, watering and frequent weeding.

Given the crop’s early success, Mary is planning on expanding her space under managu and cultivate the vegetable not just in her vertical garden. Besides managu, she also commercially grows strawberries, celery, spring onions, parsley, amaranth and kunde.

You can check out her journey, and pointers on how you too can tap into this lucrative agribusiness here: Mary Ikigu_Thefarmgirlke

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: 05 October 2021; Hits: 7560

Uni student helps family save on daily vegetable costs with 8 x 6 garden

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By George Munene

On an 8 x 6 slice of land adjacent to her home in Embu, Maureen Mwaniki, a 22-year-old student at the Nyandarua Institute of Science and Technology has set up her own kitchen garden stocked with vegetables— from sukuma wiki, managu, terere and cabbages. She also grows onions and tomatoes and has even worked out how to propagate herbs such as garlic and ginger.

The distance to markets and scarcity caused by the seasonality of everyday essentials she says gave her the impetus to start the project. Being in school, she did not have the time to properly tend to the farm but the stoppage in learning occasioned by the Corona virus has given her time to cultivate into her backyard garden.

Her garden is fenced off with a worn-out mosquito net which acts as a shade net that keeps off invasive insects such as whiteflies. This has in turn significantly reduced her need to use pesticides.

Studies also show that crop yield in shade nets is up to six times more than those grown in an open field and that they save farmers up to 30 per cent of harvestable yield losses. Nets also trap heat for the crops which substantially reduces their maturity period.

She grows her crops in cement bags and decrepit buckets, basins and plates which she fills with sifted out topsoil and manure. “Farmers mix in sand into bags to help in water penetration, however, besides being nutritious to the soil, manure also increases its capacity for water absorption and penetration as well as the soil’s water-holding capacity,” says Maureen. Concrete bags used for growing should be well perforated to allow for air circulation and avoid build-up of excess water which rots vegetative material.

Whilst the idea of growing vegetables in bags is no longer a novelty, Maureen also propagates garlic. She grows four cloves in one bag, this she says ensures they have adequate growing room; each clove will sprout into its own bulb and if they are too many in one bag they will have too much competition for resources and will grow-out too small. She measures the depth of planting by sinking her thumb into the soil whilst the distance from each clove is. She then covers the bulbs with manured soil and waters. The neck serves as a shoot, while the base of the garlic will form the rooting system. Bigger cloves make similarly bigger and healthier bulbs. On the perforated side of bags used to grow garlic, you can also grow other vegetables like sukumawiki.

Garlics usually come in two varieties; hardnecked—characterised by a stiff neck and softnecked. Softneck garlic does well in hot areas while the hardnecked garlic does better in colder climates. Hardneck varieties also do not store as well. They usually start to shrivel and deteriorate post-harvest after four to six months while softnecks keep for nine to twelve months under ideal storage conditions.

While the produce from her farm is meant for subsistence consumption, she usually has excess Sukumawiki which she sells or gives out for free to neighbours and visitors.

Maureen has even set up her own Youtube channel which she hopes to use to encourage more people to get into backyard farming: “I would like to empower other people and have them learn that they do not need to buy every food item. If you could keep that 10 or 20 bob you use every day to buy sukuma or onions, over the course of a year that is a lot of money saved.”

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: 04 October 2021; Hits: 6726

Uasin Gishu farmer's switch from passions to tree tomato earns Sh2M/Year

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By George Munene

For Elisha Onzilu, switching from passion fruits to tree tomatoes proved the best farming decision he's ever made. Now harvesting at least 35 tons of the egg-shaped fruit annually from his farms in Uasin Gishu and Elgeyo Marakwet; “a kilogram of the fruit usually has a farmgate price of Sh 60-70, my only regret as you might imagine is that I do not have more land to put under this wondrous fruit,” he rues.

The previous day he had to defer on a phone call interview as he was en route to delivering some 1.5 tonnes of the fruit to Nairobi, over the course of the day he said he will be ferrying another 0.7 tonnes. “As more people are catching on to tamarillo’s numerous health benefits there is an ever-expanding market that is hard to satisfy,” says the farmer who once supplied Nakumatt outlets across East Africa with the fruit.

Elisha's Journey into tree tomato farming begun some 10 years ago, catalyzed by his search for an alternative fruit to passion fruits which he’d found to have a high production cost: “The initial cost in setting up an acre under passion fruits could run me Sh230,000 while on the same piece of land it costs Sh 130-150,000 to establish tree tomatoes (one year from sowing seedlings to first fruit),” Elisha explains. This caters to everything; land preparation, seedlings, labor, manuring, fertilizers and transport costs.

While a tree can yield up to three kilograms, to avoid getting frustrated he advises farmers to scale down their expectations to at least one kilogram of fruit for every harvest. An acre should conservatively give 700 kilograms of fruit, at Sh60 on the kilo this earns Sh42,000 for every harvest, i.e., every two weeks.

Passion fruits require exhaustive regular routine management practices such as pruning and trailing besides being easily susceptible to diseases. Tree tomato harvests are also more to passion fruits which is exacerbated by the fact that passion fruits require a three-month pause in harvesting to allow for the regrowth of shoots. Tree tomatoes are harvestable throughout the year.

Passion fruits prices often fluctuate and at times crater to as low as Ksh20 a kilogram. Tamarillos for their part, usually hold steady at Sh60 to 70 with prices rarely falling below Sh50. This also partly owes to the ubiquity of passion fruits. Though more farmers are gradually taking up tree tomato growing they are still not as widely accessible.

To satisfactorily manage an acre of tree tomatoes, Elisha says he spends about Sh10,000 after every monthly harvest—this covers the control of pests as well as nourishing plants through manure and fertilizer application.

In growing tree tomatoes the most critical factor to consider is feeding—they are vociferous in their consumption of fertilizers and water. Tree tomatoes can be harvested every two weeks, but for this to be continued over the tree’s 5-to-10-year lifespan it needs to be regularly nourished.

A farmer needs to apply 160-200Kg of synthetic fertilizers per acre every three months for top dressing. This is buttressed by 15-20 tonnes of manure applied for the fruit’s lifetime. This is especially crucial as Onzillu illuminates; “unlike artificial fertilizers which have a limited utility window the tree is able to feed on organic fertilizer throughout its life expectancy.”

Tree tomatoes are broad-leafed this means they have a high respiration rate thus consume a lot of water. For Elisha, watering is done twice or thrice a week feeding each plant up to 10 liters.

The usually rainless December to March months he says, are characterised by reduced yields, this can be ameliorated by irrigation.

The location of his farms in Elgeyo Marakwet which has an altitude of 2,700 meters also gives him a competitive advantage to other tree tomato farmers. A 2500–3000-meter altitude is the most ideal for tamarillos as fruits grown here have a red almost purple hue that is preferred by consumers.

Due to increased farmer inquiries in order to satisfy burgeoning market demand, Elisha has also ventured into seedling production, selling each at Sh10.

Elisha Onzilu: 0791919170

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