Hi Steemit
- This morning we are checking out how you can grow spinach called Efo tete in yoruba language, a leafy vegetable with numerous health benefits. Spinach contains lots of minerals and vitamins like potassium magnesiun, vitamine B and E also contain folic acid. All these have the specific important health role they play in the body.
Growing Efo ( vegetable) is easy, they grow in alkaline soil and sandy loam works best. Here in Kwara state Nigeria, we grow vegetables at any season as long as there exist enough water for irrigation.
Women are found mostly when it comes to vegetable production in around here during the dry season they follow four simple steps to grow their vegetables by the river bank.
- Clearing and raising of beds
Simple hoes and cutlass is used to clear bush and break the crumbs of soil to create smooth soil where vegetable root can penetrate.
Beds are usually created 6-8inches above the soil.
- Application of compost and enough water.
Buckets and bowls are used to fetch water from the river to wet the soil before plant, but before then there is addition of compost manure, here this woman uses animal dung already melted in water to spray her bed, this way the dungs gets assimilated into the soil quickly.
The hausa- fulani uses a pipe irrigation susyen to wet their own vegetables whenever they grow this plant.
- Planting , weeding weeds and continous wetting of vegetables
Planting is an easy task as seeds from plants that have been allowed to bud from last harvest is used to spray the bed. Calculated amount of spacing is given to seeds to prevent overcrowding which will yield numerous plants with tiny leaves.
These seeds were allowed to dry, plugged from the leaves and kept in storage.
Budding vegetable plant carrying seeds.
- Weeding pest control and harvesting
Weeding is usually by hand pulling of weeds and the most local pest control is by the use of ashes from burning woods to spray this leaves to prevent growth of pest, insect are handpicked to avoid destroying the leaves.
Ashes for spraying vegetables
Harvesting is by hand as well and leaves are picked from plants at random to allow continious growth of the plant.
After all the seasons harvest plants are then allowes to bud seeds for next session.
Note
During the wet season i use vegetables as weed control by spraying the seeds in between ridges where this these weeds ought grow, which will also serve as soup ingredients for my family.
Vegetables are harvested and sold in the market by their farmer but usually their children could be seen hawking this leaves.
