Most lettuce varieties are quick and easy to grow and produce a harvest within a month or two. Lettuce does NOT like hot weather. Therefore, you can only grow it during the cooler months from May to July. Although it grows faster in full sun, it is one of the few vegetables that tolerates some shade. What’s more, you can grow lots of lettuce in a small space. You can even grow it with other taller plants like tomatoes.
Crops
Sweet Potatoes: From Planting To Harvesting
Sweet potatoes are tropical plants that grow best when it’s hot. The plants are sensitive to shade which leads to low yield. However, for maximum root filling to occur, the temperature should be between 25-32°C. Higher temperatures slow photosynthesis leading to vegetative growth (lots of kalembula) and not for tuber filling. Preparing to plant Sweet … Read more
Growing bananas – An Overview
Banana plantations can last a long time. However, if you want good harvests, you must dig up the plantation after 7 to 10 years. Some commercial farmers dig up after 4 years. You’ll also have to practice crop rotation and plant legumes such as beans for 2 years before you plant on the land again.
How to grow black pepper
Black pepper also called “Black Gold” is one of the most expensive and popular essential spices. It is the cooked and dried unripe fruit of the Piper Nigrum plant. White pepper on the other hand, is the ripe fruit seeds.
If you don’t know the potential of cassava as a cash crop, then you need this…
CMT’s 3rd Cassava World Africa summit presents cassava market business prospects across Zambia, Mozambique, Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania. On 10-11 October 2017, at the Radisson Blu Hotel Lusaka, they take stock of Africa’s cassava commercialisation success stories – across food and non-food applications and challenges hindering the region from a complete ‘transformation’ despite producing large volumes of cassava!
Watch out for these onion diseases
There are a number of diseases and disorders that affect onions and related crops. Most of these are either fungal or bacterial whereas others are caused by air pollutants, adverse weather, nutritional imbalances, soil conditions and pest control products.
Tips for correctly fertilising onions
If you think growing onions is easy and straightforward, you will end up with a failed crop. Fertilising onions or any vegetables for that matter, is not like baking a cake, where you can get a consistent result. You have to deal with different soils and also take into account the fertility of that soil.
Tips For Growing Spinach
When growing spinach (Spinacia oleracea), the trick lies in making it last as long as possible. It has similar growing conditions as lettuce, but is more versatile in both its ability to be eaten cooked or raw and its nutrition. It is rich in calcium, iron and vitamins A, B, and C, and a great healthy food loaded with antioxidants providing many health benefits.
How to stop rodents from eating your potatoes
If you grow potatoes in the ground, you could find yourself facing damage from mice every now and then. These little animals love to dig through soil in search of potato tubers. And when they find one, they eat it until they’re satisfied. This can lead to serious losses as your potatoes will have either a few bite marks or half of the them missing.
A beginners guide to growing sunflowers
You may have driven past a field of sunflowers and wondered why people grow them. Well, they are a very marketable crop. And, believe you me, there’s no secret technique to growing sunflowers. All it really takes is sowing a seed. The sunflower buds then follows the sun as it treks across the sky each day until it blooms. Apart from growing a cheerful flower, there are also other benefits to growing sunflowers.