By Ogova Ondego

Vegetable Production Technical Handbook is useful reference material for any one who grows vegetables.

This book not only defines horticulture as the growing of vegetables, cut flowers, edible mushrooms, spices and herbs and fruits, but also tells you which vegetables are suitable for the local and the export market.

“The smallholder farmer,” the book says, ” should address the basic aspects of ‘economics of production with due regard to when to grow, for whom and where to sell’.”

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The book advises the farmer to be conversant with the demand and supply situations for horticultural produce throughout the year, targeting market outlets during the dry period when the prices are likely to be high and staggering the production period for continuous supply as per the market requirements.

Among the 29 vegetables of commercial and nutritional significance tackled in this manual that was published in 2016 are beet root, cabbage, butter nut, carrot, courgette, lettuce, cucumber, capscum or pepper, garden peas,courgette,  pumpkins, onions, tomatoes and common local vegetables known among the abaLuyia community of western Kenya as tsisaka (spider plant), likhuvi (cow pea leaves), tsimboka (leafy amaranths or mchicha), miroo (slenderleaf or crotalaria), murele (Jew’s mallow) and even the wild inderema (vine spinach, creeping or climbing spinach).

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Spinach thrives in fertile, well drained and high organic matter in altitudes of 1000m above sea level and temperatures between 10 and 20 degrees centigradeaboThough this book touches on local vegetables in passing, the farmer is still likely to draw dividends from the information contained in this reference manual that is prepared by crop scientists and specialists and published by Agriculture Information Resource Centre in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

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An ArtMatters.Info article.