Farming In Dunga Wet Land

Cone gardening, is a new farming trend that has emerged and is slowly replacing the kitchen gardening idea. At Wise Kenya we work with women around Dunga beach, a wetland area that experience massive flooding during the rainy seasons. During this time it’s always hard for women to engage in farming for food since their gardens are always submerged. We decided to give out cone gardens to our women in agribusiness as a way of ensuring they have a source of healthy vegetables throughout all seasons.

We took them through training and helped them installing their cones. This was an exercise properly done with the help of a team of professional to ensure success. This is a venture that will ensure that women have food for domestic use and they can even commercialize the surplus and make livelihood out of it.

Some of the vegetables they plant are coriander (dhania), cherry tomatoes, leafy traditional vegetables (managu, sukuma wiki, spinach) and leafy onions, arrow roots.

The decision to settle for these type of vegetables is because, they are easy to manage and they are not prone to  instance, leafy onions have a natural smell that scare away pests.

When all the initial procedures are done well the crops thrive so well. The site should also be in a place that the crops receive proper sunlight.

Cone gardening, will ensure that there is food security around Dunga Beach. Most residents of Dunga source for their vegetables far away and if our women farmers can have a regular supply they can suite the needs of those who reside around Dunga, hotels around the beach hence empowering them economically.

We are also partnering with Mshamba to ensure that our women can sell their vegetables online and now they will be able not only to sell to the locals but also sell to supermarkets, deliver to people in different geographical locations within Kisumu. We are ensuring this by engaging in healthy and high end crops that have too much demand in the market, for instance arrow roots (nduma), cherry tomatoes that are produced locally and not compromised with chemicals as it has been the trend lately in the market.

Our women farmers are always trained on best farm techniques that they can in cooperate in their cone gardens. Recently they took part in ten week training, on pest control and best farming techniques.

So far so good.  A pat on the back for our women in agribusiness.

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