Again i did it to the best of my ability when I visited my farm today! There are numerous work all over the farm ever since I've break for the couples of days now when work in school arouse. I needed to speedy up things so that things wouldn't get worse. To get ample time to work thoroughly, I arrived in the farm early dawn around 5:am. I couldn't get my breakfast ready before coming, but that wouldn't be a problem for me at all. It isn't good practice to starve or work with empty stomach but I don't often eat early even when I'm in the house.
First thing first, I took a glance look at my pepper which is in proximity to some nearby houses. Due to vandalization of some stubborn goats, I've provided the pepper with some net. For my observation, due to bumper rain, I'm experiencing vegetative growth in my pepper. Even though they had abundance flowers but not all were able to mature into fruits. This is due to higher vegetative growth rate. One might think that deficiency of Nitrogen has set in due to some pale or yellowish in some of the leaves. This might be too much rainfall.
The maize plants are looking very good. The whole farm has two division. I have the other side of the maize farm being inter-crop with cassava while the other side being monoculture. The side where I have cultivated only maize would be applied with selective weedicide while the side inter-crop with cassava would be weeded. Of course, I last shared with you that I've began my first weeding in this minor season. The trend continuous today. I've decided to finish the weeding of this side by the close of this week. The weeds are strongly competing with the maize of which I needed to speed up my weeding. Though the farm size at this area isn't too large, but I'm planning to hire a labourer to support me.
I needed to patiently weed with much care. Some of the cassava were just planted and I had to take caution not to hurt any of the plants. That would also mean that if I hire a labourer, I need to accompany him here and coach him or monitor his weeding so that he doesn't destroy the maize plant.
The plantain, egg plants and potatoes were also included in my list of visit today to see how they were faring. If everything was going on as expected. I was very excited 😂 to see how these juvenile plantains are growing competitively with the base weeds. The heavy rainfall which we experienced for the couple of weeks past have been very helpful for the crops these days. For the look of this things, this year the Meteorologist department has forecasted that rain could even extend through month of November 2023. What I've to be up and doing is making sure to sanitize the farm frequently, manage all the pests and diseases. When it comes to plantain, pest and disease infestation is quite minimal compared to the vegetable crops like beans and tomatoes. I don't actually see much pest which harbour the plantains on the field of growth. The only known pests are termites and ants which attack the root system and lead the plantain to die at the early stage. When the roots anchor the soil and mature, it's difficult for any other pests to infest them.
Preferably, the plantains need to be stake whenever, they bear fruits, especially when the fruits are very heavy and the soil is well drained or moist. They easily uproot naturally from the soil with least wind storm.
In fact inter-cropping of plantain with sweet potatoes is one of the best option to adopt, especially as the potatoes are noted to fix Nitrogen into the soil to support fast growth of the plantain. However, weeding becomes a problem for the farmer since potatoes are noted to cover the surface of the land. In some way, the potatoes act as suppressing the weeds to some extent. Hand picking of the few weeds which are likely to emerge is possible, but this isn't advisable due to mis-unfortunate of snake and other aggressive animals which can bite.
It was time to take home few produce I planted which is time to harvest and taste. These are tomatoes and new variety of turkey berry fruits I planted at small portion of the farm. Actually this isn't the commercial ones, but they were planted purposely for family consumption. I didn't actually applied any form of chemical like fertilizer, recommended pesticides or disease control chemicals. They were planted raw to see how they can survive with the adverse weather conditions. Their fruits are very small compared to the ones I apply fertilizers.
I'm done with today's visit of my farms with lots of work, rounds I made. I promise to bring you more updates about my farm. Thank you!
