HELLO HIVE

I felt some hivians might need a little enlightenment on what multicroping system of agriculture means and how it works, so recently while I was working on my farm I came across this in full light and my attention was drawn to how good and effective this could be if it is practiced in the best possible way and how bad it can actually be if the opposite is done.

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I planted fluted pumpkin on my farm and did not stake it but instead I allowed it to lie on the ground since making stakes for the crop to vine on would be stressful owning to the fact that the land was bigger than the average garden and just a space apart on the next ridge I planted sweet potatoes and with time both crop started growing and their branches stretched out longer till it got to the next ridge, since they where plants that have branches that vine they both ended up entangling each other that was another eye opener on how important it was to know which crops are best suitable for this system.

Benefits that this system can have to me as a farmer

• it helps me to utilize my farm land especially if you are a farmer with small farm land then this can help you double your production

• in conditions where you are experience problems of pest and disease then this system can be quite helpful since this would end up been a shared burden between them.

• the more manure rich plants like the leguminous crops e.g groundnuts can help increase the average soil nutrients by the process where fix nitrogen to the soil using nodes that are at root parts.

• practicing this would mean that the total cost of production will reduce especially money spent on irrigation, weeding and also fertilizer.

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Disadvantages

As much as this looks nice and cool it also has it own downside since to practice this you have to be someone who understands what it entails cause trying to plant some certain crops on the same piece of land doesn't just work sometimes you would have to understand the best combination of crops that you can grow together example would be cases where two vine crops are grown together say for example fluted pumpkin and potatoes.

The best period to plant those crops for example on my farm I do plant maize and guinea corn together on the same farm land even though you might expect them to affect each other but, they still wouldn't since I always plant the maize more than a month earlier than the guinea corn so by the time the guinea corn is about a month or two old the maize would probably been harvested or harvesting it wouldn't be far off any longer.

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Practicing this can only be possible if that is very fertile so in cases where the land is not that fertile then practicing this system would be difficult or even impossible.

So before thinking about multicroping system just try and go through some of this points and also get help from older farmers if you are new to this it will be helpful.

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