A lot of people have been writing me on how they can plant water leaves and harvest such organic and fresh ones like mine.
The truth is that these things are not hard to do. In fact, there is no technical procedure involved.
The thing about farming is just that most of us were not introduced to it early in life, and it now makes us think it must be very difficult to achieve.
But here is a step-by-step guide on how to plant water leaves in your home garden.
Step 1: Prepare your beds. Sometimes, you don’t even need to make beds; just soften the ground where you want to plant them.
As long as the ground is soft (and rich in nutrients), they will germinate – beds, heaps, ridges, or none at all.
Step 2: Get your stems.
I am sure most of you will be shocked at this particular point.
Most of you don’t know that what you plant are just the same stems you remove from the same water leaves you bought in the market.
Let me explain.
When you purchase water leaves from the market to prepare your delicious vegetable or afang soup, you cut off the leaves to use. Those stems you usually pour into the refuse can are what you should plant.
Just gather them and go to the ground you have prepared and simply put the stems to the ground to a certain depth. 5cm into the ground is enough.
It takes just 3 – 5 days for those stems to germinate, and next, they start developing their own roots.
Step 3: Pour manure around them.
This is particularly important if you are not sure of the quality of soil you are planting on. So you can enrich it using compost manure, poultry droppings, or any other animal dungs.
Step 4: Water them.
Water leaves can be planted anytime. There is nothing like this is the season or otherwise. The only thing is that they require good amount of water supply.
So if you plant them and rain does not fall throughout that day, the next morning, you should water them adequately.
And if it is in a dry season, you should water them every day after planting, and three to four tines a week when they start growing.
The growth is usually very rapid if adequate water is supplied.
Step 5: Harvest and enjoy.
It takes just 4 – 5 weeks for your water leaves to be ready for harvest.
You can harvest with your hands or kitchen knife.
To harvest neatly and sharply, cut from the stem to allow more shoots to come out from that point. Subsequently, you can be harvesting those shoots every 2 – 3 weeks as they continue to spread.
Of course, the quality of leaves and the size of leaves depreciate as the plants grow old.
But guess what!
Water leaves are considered to be self-pollinated, and the seeds that fall to the ground can easily germinate and form fresh ones.
That is how the propagation will continue until they will take over your entire compound if you don’t control them…..Seê _ Morê
Leave a Reply