Farming Interest - Watermelon Cultivation – Tikiti Maji

Monica cooks for the brothers and the priest in the house and for any visitors who come. In addition to these duties, she cultivates a large garden plot. When she gets too busy, other people help her. At this time, the plot has watermelons, or tikiti maji, growing. Expensive F-1 hybrid seeds were purchased to grow this crop. The seeds might be from Austria. Twenty five grams of seed cost $50 or more and was enough to plant ½ acre. The seeds were planted directly into the ground in November. There are 8 rows 200 feet long and 10 feet apart. The plants look vigorous and the fruits are ripening.
After emergence, aged cow manure was applied along with one tablespoon of NPK per plant. The brand name of the NPK is Yara Mila but I could not discover the concentration. At about one month, she applied a urea spray. At fruit set another fertilizer is applied but I couldn’t find any information about it. It was called ‘Can’.

Several fungicides and insecticides are applied during the growing season to control whiteflies, aphids and fungal diseases. Some of the chemicals used include cypermethrin, profenofos, and abamectin. The fungicides used are copper and mancozeb. A foliar fertilizer called Easy Gro is also applied at the same time. This is a NPK foliar with trace elements. I couldn’t verify any kind of a spray schedule or amount applied. It seems like a variety of sprays were mixed together and sprayed a number of times. Some of the sprays have a 3 day reentry restriction and a 14 day harvest restriction. This means that people should not be in the field for 3 days after spraying. I am certain that they are not following that rule and I think they spray without protective clothing.
The watermelons are irrigated with flood irrigation. This seems very inefficient and they know this. Water is only required near the roots but they are using channels to bring water to the field.
The fruit set seems to be good although the melons are only 3-5 pounds each. They say that a melon sells for 2,000 – 5,000 TSH or between $ .90 and $2.10.