Lavington farmer does green wonders using hydroponics

Have you ever thought of starting a vegetable garden in your backyard but you do not have enough space?
The answer to your problem is hydroponics.

Hydroponic is a technology where plants are grown without using soil.

One of the farmers who have embraced this system is Kirogo Mwangi, 52, a resident in Lavington West, Nairobi.

“I use this technology to grow vegetables. I have utilised every space in my compound for farming,” he says.

He grows the crops in the corridors outside his house, using drip irrigation.

“Some of the vegetables I grow are for my family’s consumption. I also donate the surplus to a children’s home,” Kirogo says.

The farmer who ventured into hydroponics three years ago uses it to grow lettuce, spinach, sukuma wiki and tomatoes. While in soil, plants are always robbed of vital nutrients which affects their potential for growth but in hydroponics, this is not the case.

The farmer says veggies grown using hydroponics are more colourful and larger. Considering that there is no use of soil, Kirogo produces his manure by decomposing all green waste from his family kitchen using American Red Wiggler worm. The technology is called vemiculture.

Kirogo who is rearing worms in his home says he bought the first crop from a company in Thika.

“I bought one kilogram of the worms with Sh600 from a company in Thika. The worms are also many in forests and other farmers who rear and sell them at Sh1,000 per kilo,” he says.

“In hydroponics, nutrients are dissolved in water and fed directly to the roots therefore there is no concern about excess water, space for each plant to avoid competition for nutrients and water and weeding. This cuts cost for the farmer,” says the public health consultant.

Control diseases

Kirogo says the vegetables are raised in a nursery where he uses cocopeas from crushed coconut husks as a substitute of soil to hold the shoot firmly in place.

He says the hydroponic vegetables are healthy and reliable throughout the year.

“It requires little effort and you are always sure of getting vegetables with high nutritive value. To achieve this, one should be ready to share his space with the crops,” he adds.

Using hydroponics, he says he is able to control diseases since the materials used are inert and contains no disease causing agents. For those who think hydroponics is expensive, he says, he uses recycled pipes and the vertical space on his compound.

He has set up a portable structure using wood and recycled pipes which had been abandoned in building and construction sites. This structure supports forty stems of vegetable.

“The system he has created allows water to be recycled hence there is no shortage unless if there is a leakage,” he explains.

Unlike other methods of planting, he says hydroponics takes 50 per cent less land to grow same amount of crops and also reduces the time to grow veggies by half.

To sensitise other interested farmers in hydroponics, last year, he founded an organisation called Centre for Appropriate Technologies. The organisation promotes urban farming by providing readymade structures for interested farmers such as multi-storey gardens and stacked hydroponic pipes.