Greetings from LoFarms Located in Ofada, Ogun State Nigeria.

I’m here to share details of the various stages we are going to go through setting up our first 1 Acre Cucumber farm.

We pray that God, The weather , The plants and The Pest will be fair on us. However we will do what we have to do.

Watch this space. For updates.

What we have done so far

The first Plough, because of the size of the land, manual labor isn't an option.
The ploughing will turn the soil over and expose weeds and there seeds.

We will leave this for 10 to 15 days to allow the weeds grow then we will plough again to loosen the soil.

Two trucks of chicken waste has been dumped on the land it will be left to decompose.

More updates in 10 days.

Ploughed land

First truck load of manure

For some reason uploading videos on Nairaland hasn't been going through please manage the pictures

Nice one

Hi, good initiative. I have some questions though;
Where in Ogun state is your farm located?
How much did you pay to secure it? Lease or Buy?
How much are you paying for these mechanical operations (like the ploughing) on your land?
Which type(s) of cucumber seeds do you intend to plant?

one acre cucumber farm is not a laughing matter his coming dry season it is a big project,if you factor in the staking and irrigation alone you will better appreciate what the op is trying to do,pls try and update the project with pictures there are many veggie farmers online that are ready to help with ideas that have worked,try and contact farmers like wiz2019 he is around your area,plants on a large scale and I believe you can learn one or two things from him mostly on cost cutting because I believe you may spend too much on setting up that farm,no matter what you do keep the expenses under ₦500k,it maybe a miracle but it's possible.

LoFarms:
First truck load of manure

For some reason uploading videos on Nairaland hasn't been going through please manage the pictures

you will need at least 2 or 3 more truck loads,6 plots is big 10-12,000 plants

okoroemeka:
you will need at least 2 or 3 more truck loads,6 plots is big 10-12,000 plants

You're obviously right sir, we have loaded another truck load of manure yesterday and we may just get another truck.

dedons:
Nice one

Thank you sir

okoroemeka:
one acre cucumber farm is not a laughing matter his coming dry season it is a big project,if you factor in the staking and irrigation alone you will better appreciate what the op is trying to do,pls try and update the project with pictures there are many veggie farmers online that are ready to help with ideas that have worked,try and contact farmers like wiz2019 he is around your area,plants on a large scale and I believe you can learn one or two things from him mostly on cost cutting because I believe you may spend too much on setting up that farm,no matter what you do keep the expenses under ₦500k,it maybe a miracle but it's possible.

True sir! Keeping cost below 500k is very difficult, the river is 200m away from the farm, 200m of thick rain forest, and swamp so it's a challenge but we will get through.

Elpinto:
Hi, good initiative. I have some questions though;
Where in Ogun state is your farm located?
How much did you pay to secure it? Lease or Buy?
How much are you paying for these mechanical operations (like the ploughing) on your land?
Which type(s) of cucumber seeds do you intend to plant?

Normally to secure an acre / hectare of land in Ofada or most parts of Ogun state is between 10k to 15k per annum. I can't tell you for sure how much I paid cos we got a deal, also we got a deal on the mechanical ploughing, but on the average you should spend between 12k to 30k depending on who has the machines, federal government is cheaper but alot of bureaucratic processes.
The seeds we are planting is Murano 2 F1 mixed with Marketer ratio 10:1

okoroemeka:
one acre cucumber farm is not a laughing matter his coming dry season it is a big project,if you factor in the staking and irrigation alone you will better appreciate what the op is trying to do,pls try and update the project with pictures there are many veggie farmers online that are ready to help with ideas that have worked,try and contact farmers like wiz2019 he is around your area,plants on a large scale and I believe you can learn one or two things from him mostly on cost cutting because I believe you may spend too much on setting up that farm,no matter what you do keep the expenses under ₦500k,it maybe a miracle but it's possible.

Sir it's 1 hectare

LoFarms:


Sir it's 1 hectare

for a farm that size it's better to have two brand new water pumps because to water even an acre will almost be a 6 hours job for two strong workers and almost ₦700 -₦1000 fuel,so you see the pumps will be under pressure and will definitely be crumbling from time to time and you will need a backup,so if you multiply by 2 and half you get your daily fuel requiment,it's safe to say you will spending at least ₦1500-2000k on fuel daily on 1 hectare,which will be roughly ₦80,000 in 46 days, assuming it doesn't rain.i am calculating that if the soil is fertile and the management tip top 1000 bags is possible from 1 hectare,but my brother the work involved is not funny,this type of project can only achieved by farmers that has an unshakeable believe that the impossible is nothing.

okoroemeka:
for a farm that size it's better to have two brand new water pumps because to water even an acre will almost be a 6 hours job for two strong workers and almost ₦700 -₦1000 fuel,so you see the pumps will be under pressure and will definitely be crumbling from time to time and you will need a backup,so if you multiply by 2 and half you get your daily fuel requiment,it's safe to say you will spending at least ₦1500-2000k on fuel daily on 1 hectare,which will be roughly ₦80,000 in 46 days, assuming it doesn't rain.i am calculating that if the soil is fertile and the management tip top 1000 bags is possible from 1 hectare,but my brother the work involved is not funny,this type of project can only achieved by farmers that has an unshakeable believe that the impossible is nothing.

It's well sir

LoFarms:


It's well sir

Sure, it is well sir and i have to commend your effort in starting up the project and i'll gladly follow up on this thread with your updates on the progress.
But however I have my reservations concerning your plan to keep your budget below 500k for the cultivation of an Hectare of cucumber plants (at this period of the year which you know too well that the dry season is just around the corner and the rains is now getting ceased in some areas where farming activities is being practiced.) but I believe if God is on your side then your project will turn out to be a success going by your plan.

If you don't mind, you can share your contact number with me via[b] DM[/b] or my email address is on my signature timeline (if you prefer not to make it private) as I might be able to assist you with some tips on your project (I've got very good knowledge on cultivation of cucumbers as well as with the marketing).

Once again, well done sir.

the ₦500k budget I made is based on one acre,it's obvious it can't push 1 hectare,if you quickly look at some figures you will realize why,(1)2 water pumps/hoses/fuel ₦170,000,(2)bamboo 400-500 lengths ×₦100=₦40,000,staking net ₦3500 per roll(100m×2m) ×50 rolls=₦175,000,(3)seed 600-800 grams=₦128,000@₦8000 per 50 gram,as you can see this few estimates is almost up to ₦500k,many things are not included like land preparation,manure, fertilizer,chemicals,labour,etc, even if ordinary nylon ropes is used it will need almost 20-25 bags for 1 hectare @₦4000 per bag=₦80-100,000k just ropes

If I write all the problems you have created for yourself, you will say I dont write direct answers.

Here are my direct answers since you do not want to listen. But I do not want you to confuse other newbies.

1. Use only murano for a well staked farm
2. Use only marketer for an unstaked farm
3. Never combine both. You learned combination of cultivars from my post and I gave you reasons they are both not good. If you like go ahead stubbornly. You will meet the adverse effects there.
4. Those wishing you goodluck and God's intervention are telling you politely to downsize. Oga, downsize to max of 3 plots if you are using drip irrigation.
5. If you are not using drip irrigation, downsize to 1 plot.

I have given you direct answers above. Now, I can say goodluck and may God assist you.

dorispray:


Sure, it is well sir and i have to commend your effort in starting up the project and i'll gladly follow up on this thread with your updates on the progress.
But however I have my reservations concerning your plan to keep your budget below 500k for the cultivation of an Hectare of cucumber plants (at this period of the year which you know too well that the dry season is just around the corner and the rains is now getting ceased in some areas where farming activities is being practiced.) but I believe if God is on your side then your project will turn out to be a success going by your plan.

If you don't mind, you can share your contact number with me via[b] DM[/b] or my email address is on my signature timeline (if you prefer not to make it private) as I might be able to assist you with some tips on your project (I've got very good knowledge on cultivation of cucumbers as well as with the marketing).

Once again, well done sir.

I didn't say the budget was 500k, Mr Okoroemeka said I'll spend more than 500k but there are people I can contact to help me keep the cost below 500k. Because this is a public forum I can't say what has been spent.

500k can't work for 1 acre not to mention of 2.5 acres.

Pistotita:
If I write all the problems you have created for yourself, you will say I dont write direct answers.

Here are my direct answers since you do not want to listen. But I do not want you to confuse other newbies.

1. Use only murano for a well staked farm
2. Use only marketer for an unstaked farm
3. Never combine both. You learned combination of cultivars from my post and I gave you reasons they are both not good. If you like go ahead stubbornly. You will meet the adverse effects there.
4. Those wishing you goodluck and God's intervention are telling you politely to downsize. Oga, downsize to max of 3 plots if you are using drip irrigation.
5. If you are not using drip irrigation, downsize to 1 plot.

I have given you direct answers above. Now, I can say goodluck and may God assist you.

Okay thanks

Taking shape

Irrigation has been completed

More pics

See you Next year!

Happy New Year, sorry we couldn't upload any update because of how busy we were.

Let me jump straight to it.


Land preparation is something that has to be taken into consideration, especially labour.

Labour Labour Labour. No matter how much you've to pay, make sure you get labour that has signed a contract, these guys jump ships and change minds as they wish.

The land we used hasn't been farmed on for almost four years, it's best to say that it's a virgin land.

We used mechanized ploughing, twice and we faced the challenge of hard soil. We ploughed the first time when it rained and the second time a fee days after the last rain for 2019 and the soil later turned out to be very very hard. In fact I feared nothing was going to germinate.

We solved this by spending more money of fuel and pumping water, oh! I remember we planned using hose to irrigate, well after setting it up , exactly what Okoroemeka said watering with hose is a back breaker, we needed to improvise immediately and got water sprinklers. This helped with making the soil soft again. We watered everyday for at least 3 hours made the land feel like it was in the middle of the raining season.
I won't make you feel this was easy cos it wasn't. Cost wise we should have gone fro drip irrigation. Seeing what my neighboring farmer had installed he had little problem with labour and with irrigation , so in the next project we will be using Drip Tapes and drop the sprinklers.

Moving forward, we have a spacing of 20cm per hole and 1m per line.
1 seed per hole but some holes had 2 or more seeds.

Another mistake , it's best for my land would type to plant in ridges. Planting in holes is painstaking and more expensive. We had to dig almost 20,000 holes and pour manure in each hole. The labourers complained like crazy.

One advice if you can automate your farm
Irrigation
Land preparation
Mulching film
Please do it, don't rely in labourers.

We finally planted on the 29th and 30th and later planted on the 4th and 5th then disaster struck
One very strange animal or bird but I suspect it's a mammal ate the seeds. This animal ate the inside of the seed and left the shell. From my calculation it ate 6000 seeds. Almost half of the farm. We had to improvise again, buy seeds , used tyre and Gallo for nursery guraded with boko haram net. We are in the process of transplanting.

So we are counting days

Another challenge most cucumber farmers will face with Murano is
Pollination during dey season
Manual staking

In summary. Know your soil, get labour that has sigbed a contract, automate your farm, drip irrigation, weed control, trellis (staking) ,ploughing , ridging and you'll be fine.


Let me stop here.

LoFarms:
Happy New Year, sorry we couldn't upload any update because of how busy we were.

Let me jump straight to it.


Land preparation is something that has to be taken into consideration, especially labour.

Labour Labour Labour. No matter how much you've to pay, make sure you get labour that has signed a contract, these guys jump ships and change minds as they wish.

The land we used hasn't been farmed on for almost four years, it's best to say that it's a virgin land.

We used mechanized ploughing, twice and we faced the challenge of hard soil. We ploughed the first time when it rained and the second time a fee days after the last rain for 2019 and the soil later turned out to be very very hard. In fact I feared nothing was going to germinate.

We solved this by spending more money of fuel and pumping water, oh! I remember we planned using hose to irrigate, well after setting it up , exactly what Okoroemeka said watering with hose is a back breaker, we needed to improvise immediately and got water sprinklers. This helped with making the soil soft again. We watered everyday for at least 3 hours made the land feel like it was in the middle of the raining season.
I won't make you feel this was easy cos it wasn't. Cost wise we should have gone fro drip irrigation. Seeing what my neighboring farmer had installed he had little problem with labour and with irrigation , so in the next project we will be using Drip Tapes and drop the sprinklers.

Moving forward, we have a spacing of 20cm per hole and 1m per line.
1 seed per hole but some holes had 2 or more seeds.

Another mistake , it's best for my land would type to plant in ridges. Planting in holes is painstaking and more expensive. We had to dig almost 20,000 holes and pour manure in each hole. The labourers complained like crazy.

One advice if you can automate your farm
Irrigation
Land preparation
Mulching film
Please do it, don't rely in labourers.

We finally planted on the 29th and 30th and later planted on the 4th and 5th then disaster struck
One very strange animal or bird but I suspect it's a mammal ate the seeds. This animal ate the inside of the seed and left the shell. From my calculation it ate 6000 seeds. Almost half of the farm. We had to improvise again, buy seeds , used tyre and Gallo for nursery guraded with boko haram net. We are in the process of transplanting.

So we are counting days

Another challenge most cucumber farmers will face with Murano is
Pollination during dey season
Manual staking

In summary. Know your soil, get labour that has sigbed a contract, automate your farm, drip irrigation, weed control, trellis (staking) ,ploughing , ridging and you'll be fine.


Let me stop here.

Rats ate the seeds.. it's never a good idea to plant the seeds directly.. I suffered this same faith with my pepper even on nursery tray

This is a lovely project but I believe you could have started small and scale up with time.

Vegetable farming without drip irrigation is nothing but suffering. 3 plots with drip irrigation and mulch would have made a lot sense, minimize self inflicted suffering etc

I wish you all the best though. Experience is always the best teacher

LoFarms:
Happy New Year, sorry we couldn't upload any update because of how busy we were.

Let me jump straight to it.


Land preparation is something that has to be taken into consideration, especially labour.

Labour Labour Labour. No matter how much you've to pay, make sure you get labour that has signed a contract, these guys jump ships and change minds as they wish.

The land we used hasn't been farmed on for almost four years, it's best to say that it's a virgin land.

We used mechanized ploughing, twice and we faced the challenge of hard soil. We ploughed the first time when it rained and the second time a fee days after the last rain for 2019 and the soil later turned out to be very very hard. In fact I feared nothing was going to germinate.

We solved this by spending more money of fuel and pumping water, oh! I remember we planned using hose to irrigate, well after setting it up , exactly what Okoroemeka said watering with hose is a back breaker, we needed to improvise immediately and got water sprinklers. This helped with making the soil soft again. We watered everyday for at least 3 hours made the land feel like it was in the middle of the raining season.
I won't make you feel this was easy cos it wasn't. Cost wise we should have gone fro drip irrigation. Seeing what my neighboring farmer had installed he had little problem with labour and with irrigation , so in the next project we will be using Drip Tapes and drop the sprinklers.

Moving forward, we have a spacing of 20cm per hole and 1m per line.
1 seed per hole but some holes had 2 or more seeds.

Another mistake , it's best for my land would type to plant in ridges. Planting in holes is painstaking and more expensive. We had to dig almost 20,000 holes and pour manure in each hole. The labourers complained like crazy.

One advice if you can automate your farm
Irrigation
Land preparation
Mulching film
Please do it, don't rely in labourers.

We finally planted on the 29th and 30th and later planted on the 4th and 5th then disaster struck
One very strange animal or bird but I suspect it's a mammal ate the seeds. This animal ate the inside of the seed and left the shell. From my calculation it ate 6000 seeds. Almost half of the farm. We had to improvise again, buy seeds , used tyre and Gallo for nursery guraded with boko haram net. We are in the process of transplanting.

So we are counting days

Another challenge most cucumber farmers will face with Murano is
Pollination during dey season
Manual staking

In summary. Know your soil, get labour that has sigbed a contract, automate your farm, drip irrigation, weed control, trellis (staking) ,ploughing , ridging and you'll be fine.


Let me stop here.

Hmmnn! well done bro what a pity you had to go through all those ordeals, but it's inevitable because as a new entrant into the vegetable production especially cucumber plants, the main mistake you made is that you embarked on a very large scale by cultivating up to 2Ha at a startup.

If you'd commenced your project start up on a smaller scale like 2 plots, that would have been a lot easier for you to manage with fewer labour hands because just 3 people can still even make use of hose to water the 2 plot conveniently in case you don't make provisions for drip irrigation (although I sell drip irrigation system kits, but frankly speaking I am a fan of those who improvise in case of inaffordability of getting the drip irrigation kits)

Nevertheless now that you've realized the mistakes you made, there's enough room to make corrections and make tremendous
improvements in your next project attempt.

Good luck to you.

dorispray:


Hmmnn! well done bro what a pity you had to go through all those ordeals, but it's inevitable because as a new entrant into the vegetable production especially cucumber plants, the main mistake you made is that you embarked on a very large scale by cultivating up to 2Ha at a startup.

If you'd commenced your project start up on a smaller scale like 2 plots, that would have been a lot easier for you to manage with fewer labour hands because just 3 people can still even make use of hose to water the 2 plot conveniently in case you don't make provisions for drip irrigation (although I sell drip irrigation system kits, but frankly speaking I am a fan of those who improvise in case of inaffordability of getting the drip irrigation kits)

Nevertheless now that you've realized the mistakes you made, there's enough room to make corrections and make tremendous
improvements in your next project attempt.

Good luck to you.

Thanks a lot. We will need drip by the end of feb.

Psalmy2cute:

Rats ate the seeds.. it's never a good idea to plant the seeds directly.. I suffered this same faith with my pepper even on nursery tray

You need to see how we secured the nursery.

Thank you. We planted on one acre and so far so good all is going smoothly. The recommended changes are
Irrigation
Mulch

Which we will insct come feb.

ifedola28:
This is a lovely project but I believe you could have started small and scale up with time.

Vegetable farming without drip irrigation is nothing but suffering. 3 plots with drip irrigation and mulch would have made a lot sense, minimize self inflicted suffering etc

I wish you all the best though. Experience is always the best teacher