Iga finds strawberry farming very productive

By Umar Nsubuga

Patrick Iga calls himself an experimental farmer. The Uganda's best farmer does not follow what others consider the normal way of growing crops.

The strawberry farmer grows the fruits in small space in what he says started as an experiment, which has paid off.

"I started growing strawberries as soon as I came back from Netherlands this year.  I started this as a joke as I wanted to master what I learnt from Netherlands. God was on my side they came out well, whoever came to my farm was interested and many people were willing to buy them before even they were ready, that's when I decided to grow more, because I knew that they had market", recounts Iga whose farm is based at Kabuwomero village Luwero district

Iga also says that he had read a certain book that says it is possible to grow strawberries in polythene bags filled with soil before transplanting which he did and it turned out successfully.



He transplanted the crops, which later produced runners and splits and soon, he had over 400 plants.

A strawberry plant takes three months to mature.

Farmers are advised to remove the flowers to avoid deformities and to allow the plant to support itself.

According to Iga, if you give your strawberries too much fertiliser, it may hurt their production. 

" Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium (NPK) fertilisers are generally formulated for specific growing purposes.  Using fertilisers that are of the wrong concentrations for strawberry plants, or even using way to much of an appropriate fertiliser can decrease strawberry production.  Often, the fertilisers cause excessive vegetative growth at the expense of strawberry production", he says. 

During the three month of waiting before harvesting, Iga prunes the old leaves, weeds his plants and waters them.

So far, his half acre has over 1,000 strawberry plants and has also set up a greenhouse, which holds another 500 strawberry plants.

"I opted for a greenhouse because it protects the plants from the cold season and heavy rainfall as well as pests," he says.

Having succeeded growing the crops in his demonstration farm, the farmer is experimenting on a new technology.

He is growing strawberry seedlings in the nursery before transplanting them in the greenhouse.

"If you uproot a single seedling with soil from the nursery and plant it directly, it will take two months to mature, unlike the four to six months it takes if planted directly into the soil or polythene bag when the roots are too young,” he says.

Each plant gives him six to eight fruits, which means he gets more than 6,000 from his over 1,000 plants.

He sells 5,000 fruits and leaves the others to workers.



Pests

There are a host of strawberry pests and pathogens that literally suck the life out of strawberries.  

If your strawberries have an infection or infestation, they may simply be too sick to produce strawberries.

There are basically three types of strawberries; June bearing, Everbearing and Day Neutral.

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