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    Star farmer: Narok to­mato farmer earns Sh3m form his wooden green­houses

     wooden greenhouse.jpg

    A con­struc­ted wooden green­house by Green­house Kenya com­pany (+254723053026).

    A Narok County to­mato farmer is earn­ing over three mil­lion shil­lings in a sea­son at his own home-made wooden green­houses, lower­ing his pro­duc­tion cost by Sh110, 000.

    Geof­frey Rono’s four green­house meas­ur­ing 16 x 40 meters are made from tim­ber and Polyvinyl Chlor­ide (PVC). A green­house cost him a max­imum of Sh250, 000 to con­struct rather than Sh360,000 he would have used to con­struct a metal green­house of the same size.

    RE­LATED NEWS: Home made green­houses fight poverty in Bungoma

    “I learnt this tech­nique from a friend in my neigh­bour­hood while I was selling fod­der crops in 2016. The friend was prac­ti­cing to­mato farm­ing in simply wooden con­struc­ted green­houses,” said Rono.

    “I then em­barked to con­struct my own and when com­plete I bought Anne F1 to­mato vari­ety seeds from Amiran Kenya Com­pany at Sh11 per seed using up to Sh11, 000 to buy 1000 seeds for a start.”

    Be­fore plant­ing he con­duc­ted a soil test to de­term­ine his soil con­di­tion at Sh2500 sav­ing him some money as the test es­tab­lished the soil could be pro­duct­ive ap­ply­ing ma­nure rather than syn­thetic fer­til­izers.

    “I am using ma­nure in my to­mato farm­ing since I star­ted fol­low­ing the ad­vice I got from soil test­ing ex­perts and this has saved me between Sh1, 500 and Sh1,800, which I could be spend­ing on a 50kg bag of fer­til­izer every plant­ing sea­son,” he said.

    RE­LATED NEWS: Green­house op­tions and costs in Kenya

    Cur­rently, he is har­vest­ing to­ma­toes from two of his green­houses while the rest are set to be har­ves­ted later.

    Rono who sells a crate of to­ma­toes at Sh2500, earns over Sh500 from only one plant of to­mato and with his big green­houses which can ac­com­mod­ate over 1500 seed­lings each, he can earn Sh750, 000 from one green­house trans­lat­ing to Sh3m from the four green­houses per sea­son.

    RE­LATED NEWS: Green­house crop ro­ta­tion quad­ruples farmer's yields

    “I har­vest one to six fruits per cluster of my to­mato pants giv­ing me about 800 fruits per plant a year,” said Rono.

    To avoid un­scru­pu­lous middle­men, he sells his to­ma­toes dir­ectly to traders who come to his farm or some­times sup­ply to traders in Narok Town.

    Find green­house op­tions and costs in Kenya here https://​goo.​gl/​mRgz3Z or find Rono for ad­vice or for to­ma­toes on +254723688101.

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