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    Mexican Marigold

    By George Munene

    Mex­ican Marigold (tithonia di­ver­si­fo­lia) is for many farm­ers no more than a men­acing weed. For Allan Kamau, a mixed farmer in Ki­ambu County, however, using the read­ily avail­able weed known for its char­ac­ter­istic yel­low/or­ange flowers and strong odor has en­abled him to es­chew ex­pens­ive store-bought fertilizers.​as well as in­creas­ing his ar­row­root yield.

    “Ini­tially, I was using a fo­liar fer­til­izer made from water hy­acinth, but with a kilo­gram cost­ing Sh240, I found the price too ex­or­bit­ant while I did not ob­serve a marked im­prove­ment in yield. I em­barked on find­ing more cost-ef­fi­cient or­ganic fer­til­izer op­tions,” Allan ex­plained. 

    A Bio­lo­gical sci­ences gradu­ate, Allan stumbled on the idea of using tithonia as an or­ganic fer­til­izer while an in­tern at Kalro, Kandara. “After read­ing that it con­tains a high amount of NPK; Ni­tro­gen, Phos­phorus and Po­tassium and the pos­it­ive im­pacts it had had for potato farm­ers who cut and bur­ied it into trenches, I de­cided to in­cor­por­ate it in grow­ing my own tuber crops,” he said.

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    On his 30×5-meter plot of ar­row­roots, the young farmer has ap­plied Mex­ican Marigold ex­trac­ted fo­liar for two sea­sons now. Not only him­self but his neigh­bors as well at­test to an im­prove­ment in his crop; “Hizindomazakoun­azi­fa­nyianini?” is a com­mon re­frain he gets from neigh­bor­ing farm­ers.    

    Col­lo­qui­ally re­ferred to as maroro, Allan soaks tithonia leaves plucked from a fence on his fam­ily home in a con­tainer and al­lows them to rot for three weeks. He for­ti­fies this with ash, crushed egg­shells and bio­gas slurry which en­riches the mix­ture and of­fers a more com­plete meal for his crops. Be­fore ap­plic­a­tion, he sieves the mix­ture be­fore adding equal parts of water. 

    Ash con­tains sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of po­tassium and cal­cium while provid­ing smal­ler amounts of phos­phorus and mag­nesium and mi­cro-nu­tri­ents like zinc and cop­per. Egg­shells are prob­ably the best nat­ural source of cal­cium con­sist­ing of up to 93 per cent of cal­cium car­bon­ate as well as trace amounts of min­er­als and other ele­ments which make it an ideal or­ganic fer­til­izer. Cal­cium also acts as an or­ganic pesti­cide that de­ters cer­tain pests without the need for chem­ic­als.

    He feeds the fer­til­izer dir­ectly onto the tuber stems every week after plant­ing be­fore the plant’s leaves de­velop their char­ac­ter­istic can­opy. “The leaves are often a prom­in­ent green with ro­bust stems,” he elatedly ob­serves. Tuber size is dir­ectly tied to the size of the feeder stem, con­sequently, the big­ger the stem is the more kilo­grams one har­vest.

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    Hav­ing run suc­cess­ful tri­als on ar­row­roots, he is plan­ning on ob­serving the per­form­ance of a vari­ety of crops such as cof­fee under its ap­plic­a­tion. 

    Per in­fonet bio­vi­sion, when in­ter­planted with other crops tithonia has been ob­served to im­prove yields. This in­cludes ve­get­ables like kale, French beans and to­ma­toes as well as fod­der crops such as Napier grass.

    Tithonia also acts as a soil im­prover. Maize is known to re­spond well when its leaves and cut­tings are ap­plied. The best res­ults are ob­tained with the ap­plic­a­tion of 5 t/ha of leafy dry mat­ter.

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    tamarind

    A visit to Kenya Plant Health In­spect­or­ate Ser­vice (KEPHIS) Mom­basa in­spired Luke Kim­weli to try a new crop on his one acre farm in Janu­ary 2016: a crop that is now earn­ing him Sh840,000 per sea­son from his farm in Emali, Kib­wezi. But, within five years, that same crop should be earn­ing him Sh5m a year for the next 40 to 50 years.

    "I had heard of the tree being grown in Kib­wezi, but I had not put much in­terest in it, but after my visit I saw its po­ten­tial as a crop, since it has var­ied use ran­ging from Juice ex­trac­tion, jam mak­ing, raw con­sump­tion, among oth­ers I de­cided to give it a try,” said Luke.

    Start­ing out, Luke bought 80 seed­lings at a cost of Sh50 per seed­ling from KEPHIS.

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    “I was ad­vised to plant the seed­lings at a dis­tance of 7m by 7m: this way all my 80 seed­lings would be ac­com­mod­ated on my one acre farm,” he said.

    Al­though he is yet to see the full be­ne­fits of his trees, since it has only been four years of farm­ing, Luke has been able to har­vest from the young trees at least 30 kilos of fruit per tree per year.

    His gains will rise much fur­ther, since while a young tree yields 20kg to 30kg of fruit, a full-grown tree yields about 150kg to 200kg of fruit per tree per year, ac­cord­ing to KEPHIS. 

    “A tam­ar­ind tree takes 8 to 12 years to fully ma­ture, but it starts pro­du­cing pods from as early as three years and that is what I am lever­aging on. Out of all my 80 trees, I am already get­ting 2,400 kilos a year, where I sell a kilo of the pods at Sh300 per kilo for bulk buy­ers and Sh400 for in­di­vidu­als who come to buy dir­ectly from me,” said Luke.

    Tam­ar­ind is a ro­bust tree that is well ad­ap­ted to semi-arid trop­ics and cre­ates a long-term farm­ing asset. The ini­tial wait­ing time for it to move into pro­ductiv­ity is longer than for many other crops, but once pro­duct­ive, the tree will pro­duce pods for between 50 and 60 years, mak­ing it a life-long earner.

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    “Since I am no longer a prac­ti­cing en­gin­eer, the grow­ing of a tam­ar­ind tree has served as a form of pen­sion fund for me, since I will con­stantly get in­come from it now,” said Luke.

    The tree is not very de­mand­ing in its nu­tri­tional re­quire­ments. Ex­perts re­com­mend young trees are fer­til­ised every two to three months with a 6-6-3 NPK or sim­ilar fer­til­iser, while adult trees should be fer­til­ized with 8-3-9 NPK or sim­ilar fer­til­iser.

    Har­vest­ing of the ma­ture pods in done in the months of May and June by pulling or cut­ting the pod away from the stalk.

    Tam­ar­ind seed­lings can be bought from Peter Kim­weli KEPHIS ex­ten­sion of­ficer on 0701573373 or Mil­li­cent Manesa on 0721652943

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    red worm

    Farm­ers ap­ply­ing ver­mi­cul­ture li­quid in crop pro­duc­tion sup­ply com­pre­hens­ive min­er­als than those re­ly­ing on syn­thetic fer­til­isers.

    Real IPM Small­holder En­ter­prise Cen­ter Man­ager Isaac Guda said ver­mil­i­quid sup­plies crops with both micro and macro nu­tri­ents, which are ne­ces­sary for hol­istic growth.

    Whilst com­mon fer­til­isers are spe­cific in nu­tri­ent sup­ply- NPK, DAP, CAN- ver­mil­i­quid has more than 15 micro and macro-ele­ments, mak­ing it a ‘single dose’ ap­plic­a­tion.

    For one to meet all the min­eral ele­ments, more fer­til­iser from the com­pound groups has to be ap­plied.

    “The main be­ne­fit of ver­mil­i­quid over con­ven­tional fer­til­isers is that it con­tains al­most all the nu­tri­ents re­quired at one go to ad­dress spe­cific crop needs,” Guda said.

    Ni­tro­gen, phos­phorus and po­tassium are the main or macro ele­ments re­quired in crops’ growth.

    A de­tailed Crop Nu­tri­tion Lab ana­lysis of the red wrig­gler worms’ ver­mil­i­quid showed the fol­low­ing min­er­als in part per mil­lion in con­cen­tra­tions.

    Po­tassium parts were 2020, phos­phorus 26.3, cal­cium 111, mag­nesium, 52.8, sul­phur 33.2, man­ganese 1.37 iron 7.54.

    Zinc was 0.40, boron 0.56, cop­per 0.30, so­dium 60.7, am­monium 11.8, chlor­ides 692, mo­lyb­denum 0.039, among oth­ers.

    The PH of the li­quid was 8.55.

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    However, to have such a rich min­eral re­source, a mix of sub­strates from vari­ous fam­il­ies of crops has to be in­cluded. For in­stance legume, which are known to con­tain ni­tro­gen and pump­kins and quash for zinc and phos­phorus are in­cluded.

    Ver­mil­i­quid is col­lec­ted and ap­plied as a folia fer­til­iser that is read­ily ab­sorbed into the plant sys­tem via the leaves.

    “You need five kilos of worms act­ing on half a kilo of the food sub­strate. For in­stance, half a kilo of cof­fee husks  added every two weeks pro­duce one litre of the ver­mil­i­quid per month,” he said.

    Ap­plic­a­tion rate is 10ml per litre of water, al­though there is no harm in ex­ceed­ing the rate.

    Just like other folia fer­til­isers, the ex­cess ap­plic­a­tion does not have scorch­ing ef­fect on the crops as the syn­thetic types.

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