Vegetables are important part of
human diet and essential for healthy living because of their high nutritive
value. The daily human requirement of vegetables is between 150g – 250g. There
is an increasing demand for vegetables and agropreneurs are already taking
advantage of vegetable production venture in rural and urban region.
Basically, vegetables are short
seasoned plants/crops cultivated for their leaves, fruits, seeds or roots. They
are easy to cultivate anywhere (farmland; backyard; garden; greenhouse; bucket;
rooftop, etc) and fast growing but require intensive care. Green house
technology can ensure continuous production of vegetables (e.g. tomatoes)
throughout the whole season. Moreover, this vegetables produced during dry
season usually command high price. Some common vegetables are Spinach,
Tomatoes, Pepper, Egg plant, Green beans, Cucumber, Ginger, Cabbage, Carrot,
Lettuce, Watermelon, Jute mallow, Okra, etc.
Interestingly, more vegetables
are now being cultivated in urban region more than ever before. Consumers in
urban area are ready to pay the price for value-added vegetable products. Green
house technology, Organic production and product branding/packaging increase
the value of vegetable products and this presents a huge opportunity for youth
residing in urban region. Major target markets for vegetables are
Restaurants/Eatery, Households, Supermarkets, Estate/Hostel, and Hotels. More
importantly, there is a huge export market opportunity for organically produced
vegetables.
Establishment of Pepper Farm
Pepper requires a daily average
temperature of about 23.9oC. Peppers are first grown in a
nursery/seed tray for six weeks before they are transplanted to open field.
When close to transplanting period, the water application should be reduced to
hardened the plant and thus will help them overcome the shock of moving. When a
field is newly ploughed it is important to allow the soil to dry up for a week.
The following varieties are
widely grown in Nigeria;
Bird peppers—atawere (Capsicum
frutescens)
Cayenne pepper or red
pepper—Sombo (Capsicum frutescens)
Atarodo (Capsicum annum)
In rainy season, the beds should
be raised about 15cm above the surrounding ground to enhance drainage and
lowered during the dry season for water retention.
Maturity ranges from 3 – 5
months depending on the varieties. They grow well on many kinds of soils,
ranging from sandy loam, clay loam and silt loam. The soil must be well
drained. Soil should be maintained with manures (6ton/Acre) or inorganic
fertilizers, NPK (300kg./Acre).
Ridge width for growing pepper
may be 75cm – 90cm, with an interplant spacing of 45 to 60cm. When planted on
the flat, a closer spacing of 60 x 60cm may
be adopted for sweet pepper (Capsicum annum).
Seedlings can easily be uprooted if planted in nursery tray but if planted on a
flat surface ridge, it should be uprooted with ball of earth using hand trowel.
Transplanting on ridges of 75cm size should be spaced 45cm between plants
(one plant per stand) to give plant
population of 29,630 plants per hectare. For transplanting on
flat, plots of 6m x 4m is recommended, with plant spacing of 45cm apart in 60cm
spaced rows. Transplanting should be done early in the morning or late
evening to minimize transplanting shock. Six week’s old uniformly sized
pepper seedlings should be transplanted, and gap
filling be done to replace missing stands
about a week later .
Kindly share your opinion,
experience, progress and challenge in this area in the comment section below.