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    The hor­ti­cul­tural em­pire that city en­gin­eer built

    Nu­mer­ous frus­trat­ing vis­its to gro­cer­ies and su­per­mar­kets without find­ing fresh pro­duce in­spired Mari­anne Kinuthia, a trained en­gin­eer to delve into urban farm­ing, a jour­ney that has meta­morph­osed into a hor­ti­cul­tural em­pire that now earns her on av­er­age Sh100,000 every month.

    After gradu­at­ing with a de­gree in en­gin­eer­ing from Tech­nical Uni­versity of Kenya (formerly Kenya Poly­tech­nic), fam­ily and friends ex­pec­ted her to pitch camp at in­sti­tu­tions look­ing for a job like any­one else would. Mari­anne however had dif­fer­ent plans.

    She had al­ways wanted to be­come a farmer and shared her pas­sion with her friends. She begged her par­ents to let her join their hor­ti­cul­ture and tree plant­ing ven­ture. They gave her three acres of land and watched as she lived' her fantasy. "More people around the world. I being one of them are tak­ing an in­terest in urban farm­ing," she says. She says urban farm­ing of­fers the same op­por­tun­it­ies rural farm­ers have "Noth­ing tastes as good as home grown, fresh picked fruits and ve­get­ables and you don't have to go to the vil­lage to get it. It doesn't take a lot of skills or space to grow something de­li­cious in the back yard," she said.

    Mar­ri­ane says she came up with the idea since she wanted to grow what they need for her fam­ily. Mostly, she says, when she went to shop for gro­cery, she did not al­ways get what she wanted or the ve­get­ables and fruits were not al­ways fresh.

    However, that in­terest has grown into a big busi­ness ven­ture earn­ing her in ex­cess of Sh100,000 per month. Be­sides grow­ing fruits and ve­get­ables, the 23-year-old is a seed­lings sup­plier and sells propag­ated vari­et­ies for green­house and out­side farm­ing. Her vari­et­ies in­clude to­ma­toes, cap­sicum green, yel­low or red vari­et­ies. She also sup­plies herbs seed­lings such as basil, pars­ley mint thyme, moringa and stevia, a now pre­ferred al­tern­at­ive to sug­ar­cane. The young en­gin­eer also helps farm­ers plant home gar­dens and take care of them.

    "I grow seed­lings and sell. I also grow them to ma­tur­ity and sell to loc­als. I also dogreen­houses," she says. Using her en­gin­eer­ing and other skills, she says she put up her par­ent's first green­house. En­cour­aged by the pro­spect­ive in green­house fan­ning neigh­bours have also joined in the ven­ture cre­at­ing more busi­ness op­por­tun­it­ies for her.

    Ac­cord­ing to Mar­ri­ane, she never ima­gined she would one day be get­ting her hands dirty in the farm. However, she does as she plants the seed­lings and makes com­pos­ite ma­nure. She seems at ease in the farm and seems to rel­ish the pro­spects as she looks to in­vest in a big land. However, the young farmer says that one does not need big land to make farm­ing luc­rat­ive.

    "Lim­ited land should not be a bar­rier, one can use a win­dow box to cul­tiv­ate ve­get­ables," she said. She fur­ther added: "What I have learnt so far is that seed ger­min­a­tion de­pends on in­ternal and ex­ternal con­di­tions. The most im­port­ant ex­ternal factors in­clude tem­per­at­ure, water, oxy­gen and light," she says.

    Most seeds af­fected by light and dark­ness will not ger­min­ate until an open­ing in the can­opy al­lows suf­fi­cient light for growth of seed­lings. Ac­cord­ing to her, she al­ways edu­cates her cus­tom­ers that vari­ous plants re­quire dif­fer­ent vari­ables for suc­cess­ful ger­min­a­tion.

    "For some seeds the fu­ture ger­min­a­tion re­sponse is af­fected by en­vir­on­mental con­di­tions dur­ing seed form­a­tion," she says. Ac­cord­ing to her mother, Mari­anne is hard work­ing and has made farm­ing an ex­cit­ing and luc­rat­ive ven­ture "I was sur­prised since I didn't ex­pect my daugh­ter to ven­ture into farm­ing like me, I thought she will be so di­gital. I am proud of her. I hope other par­ents will en­cour­age their chil­dren to do fan­ning “said her mother.

    Grow­ing fruits and ve­g­gies is an in­vest­ment in time and ef­fort, but it is worth it, ad­vises the mother. She also says that some fruits re­quire more la­bour than oth­ers. The young en­gin­eer is also a teacher and uses her spare time to edu­cate her peers and oth­ers who may be in­ter­ested in learn­ing more on hor­ti­cul­ture and tree plant­ing. She says a suc­cess­ful farmer is al­ways on the look out for in­form­a­tion be­cause of the chan­ging dy­nam­ics in the sec­tor.

    To en­sure her cli­ents her sat­is­fied, Mari­anne vis­its their farms to check on the pro­gress of their crops. She has grown her tentacles and has partnered with Agro En­vir­on­mental Ini­ti­at­ive to pub­lish her busi­ness and also share farm­ing ex­per­i­ence with other farm­ers.

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