Climbing beans are high yielding giving four times harvest compared to ordinary beans in Kenya

Climbing beans are high yielding giving four times harvest compared to ordinary beans

climbing beans are high yielding leguminous plants which are perfect for food security and agribusiness. The venture is a worthy undertaking as they will yield up to 22 bags per acre while ordinary beans yield about 5-6 bags per acre. Grown at a spacing of 1×1 metre 2 seeds per whole, one acre of climbing beans will hold 8000plants. Each plant can yields a minimum of ¼ Kg beans resulting to total yield of about  2200kg kg  from one acre. Sold at a cost of 60/= per kg, 22000×60=132, 000/= gross revenue per acre in 3 months only. The estimated cost of production and returns are shown below:

Item	Quantity	Unit cost ksh	Total cost ksh
Output	2200 kgs	60	132,000
Climbing beans Seed	25 kg	500	12,500
Fertilizer	1bags	3000	3000
Land preparation	10 md	300	3000
Stakes	4000	1	4000
Planting & staking	20 md	300	6000
Weeding	10 md	300	3000
Insecticide	300 ml	500	500
Spraying	2md	300	600
Harvesting	3 md	300	900
Threshing and winnowing	8 md	300	2400
Storage bags	40	40	1600
Transport	40 bags	100	4000
Total cost of production			41,500
Gross margin/ Returns in 3 months			90,500

Plant at the beginning of the rains using a compound fertilizer or inoculate with Rhizobium soil fertility bacteria. The plant largely grows vertically saving land space and is Ideal solution to land scarcity problem. Climbing beans growing calls for staking the crop for support with 2 metres long stakes as is the case in hybrid tomatoes farming. Canes from overgrown Napier grass can effectively be used to avoid destroying trees and avoid interfering with environment conservation. This means a farmer planning to plant climbing beans can leave napier grass from the previous season to overgrow and produce supporting stakes. Climbing beans have numerous advantages as they are leguminous and improves the soil fertility through nitrogen fixation. This makes it a good crop to include in the rotation program of the farm. The legume requires a shorter cooking period in addition to being tastier than the local beans.

Get good returns from growing sweet melons fruits in Kenya

The practice of growing sweet melons fruits in Kenya is catching up quite fast. The agribusiness pays well as one kilo of the fruit retails at an average of Sh100. Average melon weight is 2kgs.The current demand is quite impressive due to increased awareness of their health benefits. Though the demand is high but the supply is low supply making it a good agribusiness opportunity for. Sweet melon fruit reduces oxidative stress, is helpful for diabetes patients, anti-inflammatory, Controls blood pressure due to high content of potassium.

Benefits of sweet melons fruit include weight management due to lower fruit sugar in comparison with other fruits. They also contain collagen which helps keep your skin healthy as well as healing wounds. Soil sampling and analysis is advisable before planting to determine the soil suitability and get specific fertilizer advice.

Warm sunny climate with high humidity is required for growth. Fertile, moisture retentive, deep and well-drained soil is best. Growing sweet melons fruits in Kenya require application organic fertilizers, which can be can be in form of cow or chicken manure. Compound fertilizer should also be applied.

Three to four weeks before planting, prepare the ground by removing weeds and incorporating organic matter and a modest dressing of compound fertilizer. Water well and cover in clear polythene for a week before planting to warm the soil in case of cold areas. Pinch out the growing point at the fifth leaf to encourage side shoots, then retain the strongest four shoots and remove others.

Pest and diseases affecting sweet melon are spider mites and powdery are white powdery mildew deposit over the leaf surface . 

Harvest when they produce the characteristic melon fragrance and fruits start to crack near the stem.Unlike the commonly known watermelons, sweet melons fruit is yellowish on the outside, with a faintly sweet smell and greenish soft flesh. The main customers are residents of suburbs of Kileleshwa , Lavington, and Kitisuru, and the crop makes good business. The Asian community located in Parklands and Ngara areas are also big clients.

A Brief Summary of Low Tech Growing of Oyster Strains

Aloha Medicinalsperformed an experiment a few years ago to find the most effective combination of low tech pasteurization and strains to provide the highest yields for the lowest cost, as well as comparing the benefits of shredding the straw substrate to not shredding it. The strains we'll cover in this summary are as follows:

Pleurotus pulmonarius AX

Pleurotus ulmarius Elm A

Pleurotus sajor-caju AM1

Pleurotus djamor AM1

And the pasteurization methods:

• A control group sterilized with steam in a autoclave
• A water bath with Hydrated lime
• A water bath with a bleach mixture
• A water bath with standard clothing washing powder

The straw was prepared and inoculated as per the guidelines detailed in our Steam inoculation procedure, with the exception of the un-shredded straw which was used whole instead of being run through a grinder, and the replacement of hydrated lime with the other treatment chemicals mentioned above.

Across the board Aloha found shredding the straw was always the best option. Running the straw substrate through a grinder of any short before treatment and inoculation reduced the incidents of contamination and speed growth tremendously. This is in part due to the increased coverage of the pasteurization method and the increased ease of packing the substrate tightly into the grow bag. The graphs below show these results, notice the extremely stark contrast between the two.

The results were quite interesting. When treated with Washing powder and bleach, strains performed very similarly producing around 130% Biological Efficiency*  for the pulmonarius and ulmarius, and near 100% BE for The djamor and sajor-caju strains.

These numbers rise sharply when you look to the steam control and hydrated lime examples, with 170%+ BE for the ulmarius strain in both cases, 170% BE for the djamor strain grown on the straw treated with hydrated lime, and near 125% BE for sajor-caju and pulmonarius strains for both treatments. The results are clear; the stand out treatment across the board is the hydrated lime. Even Aloha was surprised that this treatment outperformed or was dead even with the steam control. This is why we suggest this particular treatment for any beginner or frugal mushroom growers. These numbers are displayed below in Figure 2.

*Biological efficiency (BE) is calculated by comparing the raw weight of harvested fruit bodies to the wet weight of substrate used. Example: 6 pounds of wet substrate produces a biological efficiency of 150%, so 9 pounds of mushrooms were harvested over the substrates lifetime.

 

The strains themselves showed a large degree of variability however all were chosen for their strong and fast growth and quick fruiting. These are all excellent strains, however Pleurotus ulmariusELM A and Pleurotus djamor AM1 are the clear standouts. Both provide very tasty fruit bodies and are a breeze to grow and if done right provide some of the highest biological efficiencies this writer has ever seen.

Those who would like to grow the mushroom strains posted above, they can be obtained from Aloha Medicinals.

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When you identify wild mushrooms…

Make sure to use several identification guides just because some might have incomplete descriptions of some important characters used in the identification process.  Also make sure that these guides have pictures of the mushroom species discussed. Another important aspect is the description itself which could be in depth describing both macro-morphological and micro-scopical features.

Use guides that describe fruitbody macro-morphology for easy to identify mushrooms. Use complete guides [with both macro and micro-morphology description] for species that seem to be hard to identify.

Don’t rely on pictures too much: Especially fleshy mushrooms found in different development stages show different colors or characteristics. Colors in fleshy mushrooms might change according to environmental conditions such as humidity or temperature. Therefore this is a less reliable feature.

Pictures sent via internet won’t give you accurate identifications results unless the mushroom to identify is an ‘easy one’ for an expert.  In some other cases one picture of a mushroom sent via internet with a request for identification is non-sense since there are so many features that overlap case in which not even experts won’t be able to tell you what it is. Besides one picture is just ‘one side of the moon’ in most cases doesn’t show all the characteristics that you need in order to identify that mushroom.

For in depth analyses you’ll need a microscope. In this case spore shape, size, ornamentation or color is important to analyze along with presence of clamps or septa on the hyphae.

What to look for when you want to identify mushrooms?

Habitat –is quite important since some mushroom species are more likely to appear in some types of forests than in others. Some species prefer conifers while some others prefer hardwoods or both. Some other mushrooms prefer grassland. Some species are commonly found in all types of habitats both in boreal and subtropical or tropical climate types –these are particularly well adapted fungi species to various substrates or climatic conditions.

Frequency -if the mushrooms is commonly found or not. Some mushrooms are rather rare but when you’ll find them they will be all over while some other are common but can be hardly found one next to each other.

Season – This is important because this way you can exclude some species that are considered poisonous ‘look alikes’ that may pop up in a different season.

General aspect –single fruitbodies/clusters/mushroom fruitbody outline.

Cap surface –color/scale presence/shape/margin.

Under-cap –gills/pores/teeth/ or combinations? Color?

Stem –shape/color/ring presence or absence/stem base color/rhizomorphs ..

Flesh –consistency or oxidizing reaction in presence of air are just two of the important characters that one needs to look for.

Spore print –in some species has an important role in the mushroom ID especially in those that present poisonous look-alikes that present a different spore print color.

Odor –is an important character because in some species of fungi have specific odors that tells us if they are poisonous or not.

Possible changes –refer to the ontogenetic development of a mushroom fruitbody or environmental changes that affect cap color or size.

All these features are differently evaluated by various authors –that’s why you need to use several guides when trying to get a mushroom ID. Some authors simply might overlook some important features. Reading several descriptions will get you a general description that includes lots of important characters.

Other important things to consider..

An expert advice always matters

Inform yourself and study the poisonous mushrooms from your area or areas that you would collect from. Check for mycological societies around –usually they have checklists comprising the mushroom species found in the collection area.

Don’t pick up mushrooms that ‘ you believe’ that you know them. Being 90% sure of the ID of that mushroom is not what you want especially if you think to fry that mushroom.

Don’t pick up edible mushrooms when you found them near poisonous ones.

If you focus on 5 edible mushrooms that you know very well that narrows the risk of poisoning.

If your 5 species are hard to confuse with poisonous mushrooms that’s even better. Make sure that none of them belong to the Amanita family.

Several opinions on a mushroom ID matters.

Always heat treat your mushroom crop before eating them.

DNA identifications

We cannot rely only on DNA analyses in order to identify fungi and this because of several reasons such as:

• Lack of sequences available in databases like Genbank for some fungi species [especially rare fungi]
• Poor sequence availability for some other fungi
• Single publications listing several sequences for the same species. Usually for a more accurate identification you need to consider and compare sequences resulted from multiple authors.
• Sequences resulted from basidiocarps collected in different geographical regions of the world might show a bit of genetic shift.
• We should take into consideration DNA sequences resulted from the analyses of several genes and not only one.
• Some DNA sequences resulted from some genes are more reliable than others [compare D2 to ITS4].
• In some cases you cannot rely on DNA sequences just because they can be easily modified and adapted according to the desire of the person working with them.
• Sometimes researchers cannot get a complete sequence of a gene.

According to my opinion we should always try to identify fungi according to classical mycology methods [macro and micro-morphological aspect] –this works pretty much for most fungi [it is also less expensive than DNA isolation]. However, some fungi species require additional analyses such as morphological aspect of colonies in pure culture [e.g., Phellinus baumii and Ph. Linteus –in which you won’t see differences in fruitbody morphology but they are different when grow on solid media]. For some rather hard to identify fungi I would recommend data collection from classical morphological analyses and DNA. 

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