Hello Hive
Farming in African can be frustrating I lie you not. I have equally had someone testify to that based on experience. The numerous challenges we face before we finally grow the food we eat is not a light situation.
Is it the battle to get a farming space or that we have to fight with cattle raisers to allow our crops grow before they come grazing. Aside the fact that the weather can also gives us much trouble, there is a lot we have to deal with before we finally grow some grains for food.
There is currently a shortage of farming land where I live currently and we have been left with no choice but to maximize every little space available for growing food crops.
In this light when you see most of our farms, we often practice mixed cropping. Paring and growing two or more crops together.
My dad did a combination here that has now totally gone wrong. He planted groundnuts and Beans together. They have now germinated, all grown and now interwoven.
There are certain combination of plant we mustn't grow together. One of such is this one that we have done here. Both Groundnuts and beans are Nitrogen fixers which will not be of any benefits to each other. The craziest part now is that the beans planted is a cover crop that has now germinated, grown, spread and covered up the growing groundnuts. Nitrogen fixers shouldn't be planted together as well as we must be careful not to plant two cover crops together.
The Groundnuts here will grow and produce well if it doesn't have some beans plants choking it up.
In an attempt to maximize the land space available, daddy has planted the wrong combination of crops.
Groundnut and corn can go together, or beans and corn as, since corn is a type of crops that grows above the ground.
Something like this may not be entirely bad. And while planting a good practice is to plant them at different times. For instance if we are planting two crops with similar lifecycle span of 3months, it is good to plant one far ahead before planting the other so that they can both mature up at different times.
The corn can be planted first and after about a month groundnuts can be added. While they both grow together maturity won't happen at the same time. By the time we are harvesting corns, the groundnut will only just be maturing up and by so doing it will have enough room to do well once the corns are harvested and the stalked pulled out of the farm.
It is not enough to practice mixed cropping, we must be able to follow some guiding principle
I hope that some day we will be able to overcome some of the challenges we are facing with growing our food crops in this part of the world.
Wow, I can only imagine , and sometimes I feel it's all these frustration that make prices not to come down. I learn today again ooo,
Thanks for stopping by