Attit:
If you are an absentee owner (you live abroad or your job doesnt permit you to visit your farm), this is how you can survive:

1. Multiple harvests: Go for crops which can give you multiple harvests. If workers steal your onions, cabbage, carrots, etc, that's it. Wasted effort. But if they steal one harvest from a crop you harvest weekly, you can still survive. Once you detect theft, sack them fast and get a new team to take over.
2. Target only high prices sales period. You cannot predict cucumber price, so do not do it. You want to be sure to sell when there is glut. The time of the year tomato and pepper are scare is always a fixed range. You are at a disadvantage cos you cannot monitor your farm, so focus on this period alone and take breaks when they are in abundance. Do not farm.
3. One manager and casual workers. No need for salary paid. Since you have fixed period and you arent running all year round, why get salary based workers? Just get a manager you pay salary. It is easier for you to get rid of just a manager fast than getting rid of all full time workers. Take the pain pf paying casual workers.
4. Leverage on the experience of someone who knows it very well.
5. Cultivate not too complex crop. Some crops are hard, do not go into cultivating them. If tomato is too complex for you, dont do it. But tomato is easy in my opinion as long as you do the right things at the right time.
6. Your Supervisor must be a loyal person to you. His role is to tackle your manager and learn. Gradually turn your supervisor to your manager if your manager is not that reliable. Pay such person per visitation, and pay well.
7. The main crops which fit here for now are: tomatoes and peppers. I wouldn't go for cucumber if I were you. Sweet corn is another good one, but make sure you have the market for it.
8. Fail forward. Check my previous post for this.
9. Be willing to lose before making profit. If you are in too hurry to recover, you will lose good people. You will hurt your business also. This is why number 10 below is important.
10. Have a robust budget. You cannot do it with a slim budget. Never!

My contribution to assist the community here:
1. Tell you precisely how to set up your farm. What to look out for. Will teach you how to take farm measurement, where to put your borehole, what to watch out for, etc.
2. Give you options for farm input and equipment. You will know exactly what to ask the seller so they dont cheat you.
3. Give you nutritional program. Low cost.
4. Give you pest management program. What to buy.
5. Feel free to buy 1 to 4 above anywhere. But if you want to check with me if you have good deals, yes I will do it for you. And on top, I can decide to give you some sellers who have very good prices who you can check with. This is a favor. I will not be involved in it. I have most sellers' contact - seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, etc. Feel free to check with them without mentioning my name. I do not even want to get involved at all. I do not need commission to survive, but there are some sellers who will ask you who are from. You mention me, and I step in, you may get huge discounts. But I dont do this cos I dont want wahala. Some people can be terrible.

Condition - You are serious, and you are ready to get started. Please, do not waste my time if you arent ready. Get ready and I will attend to you if you send me a mail. I want to assist as many as possible who are serious. Please, it is not for pilot, but for real business.

Time to start: Jan to March. After March forget it. So, I am working presently on my own, and I can advise you on what to do so you know how to restrategize and overcome hurdles ahead. I dont have time to answer you here since work has started in full force for me, but always check my email. Send me email via NL. Wait patiently, I will respond. Everyone planning to cultivate tomato and peppers need to make it this year.

This is your year of luck. Do not think I will continue this. Nope. I wont cos it is too brain tasking. It is a difficult procedure. I am using this as a SEED cos I asked God something yesterday Jan 1. This is my motive behind this gift.

Happy prosperous new year.

Attit:
If you are an absentee owner (you live abroad or your job doesnt permit you to visit your farm), this is how you can survive:

1. Multiple harvests: Go for crops which can give you multiple harvests. If workers steal your onions, cabbage, carrots, etc, that's it. Wasted effort. But if they steal one harvest from a crop you harvest weekly, you can still survive. Once you detect theft, sack them fast and get a new team to take over.
2. Target only high prices sales period. You cannot predict cucumber price, so do not do it. You want to be sure to sell when there is glut. The time of the year tomato and pepper are scare is always a fixed range. You are at a disadvantage cos you cannot monitor your farm, so focus on this period alone and take breaks when they are in abundance. Do not farm.
3. One manager and casual workers. No need for salary paid. Since you have fixed period and you arent running all year round, why get salary based workers? Just get a manager you pay salary. It is easier for you to get rid of just a manager fast than getting rid of all full time workers. Take the pain pf paying casual workers.
4. Leverage on the experience of someone who knows it very well.
5. Cultivate not too complex crop. Some crops are hard, do not go into cultivating them. If tomato is too complex for you, dont do it. But tomato is easy in my opinion as long as you do the right things at the right time.
6. Your Supervisor must be a loyal person to you. His role is to tackle your manager and learn. Gradually turn your supervisor to your manager if your manager is not that reliable. Pay such person per visitation, and pay well.
7. The main crops which fit here for now are: tomatoes and peppers. I wouldn't go for cucumber if I were you. Sweet corn is another good one, but make sure you have the market for it.
8. Fail forward. Check my previous post for this.
9. Be willing to lose before making profit. If you are in too hurry to recover, you will lose good people. You will hurt your business also. This is why number 10 below is important.
10. Have a robust budget. You cannot do it with a slim budget. Never!

My contribution to assist the community here:
1. Tell you precisely how to set up your farm. What to look out for. Will teach you how to take farm measurement, where to put your borehole, what to watch out for, etc.
2. Give you options for farm input and equipment. You will know exactly what to ask the seller so they dont cheat you.
3. Give you nutritional program. Low cost.
4. Give you pest management program. What to buy.
5. Feel free to buy 1 to 4 above anywhere. But if you want to check with me if you have good deals, yes I will do it for you. And on top, I can decide to give you some sellers who have very good prices who you can check with. This is a favor. I will not be involved in it. I have most sellers' contact - seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, etc. Feel free to check with them without mentioning my name. I do not even want to get involved at all. I do not need commission to survive, but there are some sellers who will ask you who are from. You mention me, and I step in, you may get huge discounts. But I dont do this cos I dont want wahala. Some people can be terrible.

Condition - You are serious, and you are ready to get started. Please, do not waste my time if you arent ready. Get ready and I will attend to you if you send me a mail. I want to assist as many as possible who are serious. Please, it is not for pilot, but for real business.

Time to start: Jan to March. After March forget it. So, I am working presently on my own, and I can advise you on what to do so you know how to restrategize and overcome hurdles ahead. I dont have time to answer you here since work has started in full force for me, but always check my email. Send me email via NL. Wait patiently, I will respond. Everyone planning to cultivate tomato and peppers need to make it this year.

This is your year of luck. Do not think I will continue this. Nope. I wont cos it is too brain tasking. It is a difficult procedure. I am using this as a SEED cos I asked God something yesterday Jan 1. This is my motive behind this gift.

Happy prosperous new year.

Attit:
The most common questions I received is below

FAQ 2: How can I manage cobra f1? And what should I expect?

So I will answer the two questions. Let us be honest, cobra still has the largest market share. And I can still confirm it. And the ONLY reason is that it is the cheapest and one of the best determinates so far I have checked out.

You should manage it by making sure you give it enough basal nutrition. Always install stakes before transplanting, or at least start, or your materials.must be ready on ground. Three good points:

1. Tackle viral, fungi, and bacterial diseases.

2. Tackle flower abortion due to heat and rainy season stress. This has to do with your spraying formula. The numbers of flowers you can keep depends on your harvest. There are different strategies for this. This is why pilot is so necessary at times.

3. Build the immume system of your plants. Feeding well is the secret. Build good roots, green leaves, and delay diseases. When diseases start appearing early, you cannot make good yield.

4. I cannot emphasize the essence of treating your soil with natural and scientific way especially doing soil test. . This one reason is why yield is low among farmers cos their approach is guessing.

Yield:
I do not know how people feed and they get 60g of cobra fruits. Also when you start getting 120g of fruits, that is trouble. I expect 80 to 85g all round except at the start and at the end. The highest I got was 92g during my early years and recently cos of a pilot I am doing. After the first harvest, over 80% of your harvest should above 80g. So, do your best to have above 30 fruits per plant which is 2.4kg per plant. But 40 is possible. If you manage to keep up to 50 flowers, then, you need to increase feeding.

But I see people going in with a blank nutritional strategy. They just side dress at a specific time using specific fertilizer and most of the time NPK alone. And they spray premixed micro nutrients in bottles alone. This is wrong. Feed according to what you see. The general formular I give is just a guide, you must learn about your variety and what it needs a t every stage of its development.

Yield depends on your population. To me the new style in town where farmers esp in the south of Nigeria use 1 row per bed and 50cm emitter spacing is OK. But its not the best for it. Even some use 1.5m spacing inter row cos of free air flow. It is good, but the downside is that with this variety you'd population will be around 13,500 per ha. So, your yield will be drastically low...low....low....low.

100 tons yield is what they gave as benchmark, with 30,000 plants @ 3.3kg. But I know it is achievable easier with 40,000 plants @ 2.5kg. And getting 32 fruits of 80g will achieve this, but you are always getting uninformed fruits sizes with so many 60 - 70grams....so, your yield cannot be high. And I have seen many farmers in this unproductive cycle for long, but they see themselves as experts, but they are failure to me. This is why I kicked against this kind of variety for 1 ha which I want to do. The choice is yours.

I strongly believe it should be reserved for big farms where tractors are used. And even where harvesters are deployed. Also, I strongly believe using mulch and stakes should not come in when doing this variety, and I'd possible the population should be extremely high.

With my explanation above, the best expect most NL farmers to get is 25 tons for 1 ha, and if you feed slightly well, you use mulch and stake. If you get below, you arent doing well. It is sad that with mulch, stakes, expensive forts, cocopeak, trays, etc people arent still doing well.

Today, Saturday is another weekend and I will be around to attend to as many mails as possible again via email. My condition remains same, make sure you have a farm you want to set up.

Note: Even with cobra, if you can handle 30,000 to 40,000 plants per hectare or 12,000 to 16,000 plants per acre, I believe you can achieve very high yield also. If your plan is just to use NPK and foliar spray, you cannot get it right. If you are comfortable with little yield esp the standard on NLx then, it is very ok.

betabread:
I want you to talk about water conservation especially for someone that goes the sprinkler route............ Im hearing it here as dry season farming on sandy soil is not beans.........any form of easy to lay down mulch that work seamlessly with sprinklers

Attit:

Drip was invented specially to conserve water in Isreal where there is little water. If you want to conserve water, go for drip. If you want to be succesful in vegetable farming, go for drip. Stop cutting corners. I will keep telling to try your best and raise fund tonset up well.

Sprinker can be used, of course yes. In such case, you should know you arent conserving water. And you will work against yourself if you lay mulch. It is counter productive. Yeah, you can lay mulch and use sprinkler, but it doesnt make sense since over 95% surface bed area of the land is covered. It doesnt just make sense.

Adeoye007:
Please sir I want to know your opinion on Seminis tomato, one of their marketer introduce Ansal F1 tomato seed to me, it is 1000 seeds per pack and the price is #10,000/pack.
On fertigation I want to confirm one thing, are we going to calculate the fertilizer according to the plant population or according to the Area cultivated because someone told me that we have to use between 0.5g-2g/plant with 200-250ml of water and I also read somewhere that it is according to the plot of land cultivated. I have never use fertigation before. Thanks.

Adeoye007:
Thanks for the prompt reply sir, it is not that I am not serious with my farming activity, I am just facing some challenges here and there, I hope and I pray that this year that I will have a breakthrough by the special grace of God. May the almighty God be with us all and lead us through.

Attit:
If you are an absentee owner (you live abroad or your job doesnt permit you to visit your farm), this is how you can survive:

1. Multiple harvests: Go for crops which can give you multiple harvests. If workers steal your onions, cabbage, carrots, etc, that's it. Wasted effort. But if they steal one harvest from a crop you harvest weekly, you can still survive. Once you detect theft, sack them fast and get a new team to take over.
2. Target only high prices sales period. You cannot predict cucumber price, so do not do it. You want to be sure to sell when there is glut. The time of the year tomato and pepper are scare is always a fixed range. You are at a disadvantage cos you cannot monitor your farm, so focus on this period alone and take breaks when they are in abundance. Do not farm.
3. One manager and casual workers. No need for salary paid. Since you have fixed period and you arent running all year round, why get salary based workers? Just get a manager you pay salary. It is easier for you to get rid of just a manager fast than getting rid of all full time workers. Take the pain pf paying casual workers.
4. Leverage on the experience of someone who knows it very well.
5. Cultivate not too complex crop. Some crops are hard, do not go into cultivating them. If tomato is too complex for you, dont do it. But tomato is easy in my opinion as long as you do the right things at the right time.
6. Your Supervisor must be a loyal person to you. His role is to tackle your manager and learn. Gradually turn your supervisor to your manager if your manager is not that reliable. Pay such person per visitation, and pay well.
7. The main crops which fit here for now are: tomatoes and peppers. I wouldn't go for cucumber if I were you. Sweet corn is another good one, but make sure you have the market for it.
8. Fail forward. Check my previous post for this.
9. Be willing to lose before making profit. If you are in too hurry to recover, you will lose good people. You will hurt your business also. This is why number 10 below is important.
10. Have a robust budget. You cannot do it with a slim budget. Never!

My contribution to assist the community here:
1. Tell you precisely how to set up your farm. What to look out for. Will teach you how to take farm measurement, where to put your borehole, what to watch out for, etc.
2. Give you options for farm input and equipment. You will know exactly what to ask the seller so they dont cheat you.
3. Give you nutritional program. Low cost.
4. Give you pest management program. What to buy.
5. Feel free to buy 1 to 4 above anywhere. But if you want to check with me if you have good deals, yes I will do it for you. And on top, I can decide to give you some sellers who have very good prices who you can check with. This is a favor. I will not be involved in it. I have most sellers' contact - seeds, chemicals, fertilizers, etc. Feel free to check with them without mentioning my name. I do not even want to get involved at all. I do not need commission to survive, but there are some sellers who will ask you who are from. You mention me, and I step in, you may get huge discounts. But I dont do this cos I dont want wahala. Some people can be terrible.

Condition - You are serious, and you are ready to get started. Please, do not waste my time if you arent ready. Get ready and I will attend to you if you send me a mail. I want to assist as many as possible who are serious. Please, it is not for pilot, but for real business.

Time to start: Jan to March. After March forget it. So, I am working presently on my own, and I can advise you on what to do so you know how to restrategize and overcome hurdles ahead. I dont have time to answer you here since work has started in full force for me, but always check my email. Send me email via NL. Wait patiently, I will respond. Everyone planning to cultivate tomato and peppers need to make it this year.

This is your year of luck. Do not think I will continue this. Nope. I wont cos it is too brain tasking. It is a difficult procedure. I am using this as a SEED cos I asked God something yesterday Jan 1. This is my motive behind this gift.

Happy prosperous new year.

Attit:
I will be dropping here FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

1. Attit, you talked about varieties. Determinates from Technisem is the most affordable, shouldn't we go for it?

Well, I am not saying you should not go for it. It is not a bad variety. In fact, to me, it is the leader when it comes to determinates. It early emergence and cost leadership strategy are so beneficial. You may want to check its main rival - East West. I will not say much than this, but let us check some figures. And bear in mind, ask yourself one single question, is it really cheap to manage it?

Yield
Whether you have determinate or other ones, the benchmark is 100 tons per ha.

Population
For that one ha, you need 35,000 to 40,000 plants of most determinates. But what if you can get a variety of 10,000 - 15,000 plants per ha and still give you 100 tons?

Cost of Production
1a. Water: at the peak, you need 1 liter to 2 liters daily, so that you need 35000 liters to 40,000 liters of water daily for 40,000 plants per ha. What if your peak is 10,000 to 15,000 liters. Is it not easier and cheaper?

1b. Time: Think of the time you waste in irrigating 40,000 plants which like 4 times that of 10,000.

2. Fuel: The cost of pumping 40,000 liters of water....think about it well. If you consume 100 liters per week for 10 000 plants, you will consume 400 liters for 40,000 plants. This one is the bavk breaker. This is the hidden cost no one tells you. Watch out, sellers will start using this issue to sell. Lol..

3. Manure: You need more manure for 40,000 plants.

4. Labor is higher: you will dig more holes for 40 000. You also transplant more.

5. More trays: you spend more more on trays.

6. More cocopeat: You spend more on cocopeat.

7. More side dressing: You spend more on fertilizers to do side dressing.

8. More seeds: though per grams or sachet is cheaper, but you buy more seeds.

9. More space for nursery: since you have more trays, you need more space. You need to build a bigger nursery housing. You use more materials...if you choose to put them inside net...more nets, more wooden, more service charge of you choose to employ someone to build it for you.

And many more. You can add more to yourself now that I have tweaked your rsin in the right direction..


My conclusion
Do what is OK for you. But that the seeds are cheaper than some others does not mean at the end it is cheaper to maintain it.

I always use Hazera's Shanty as a cross reference. That variety is 15,000 per ha. It is presently about N30,000 for 1,000 seeds. Yah! Crazily expensive. Yes, I know. But as a small farmer, it may pay you off than the cheap one. This is why a business plan is necessary. If you choose the cheaper option, you buy more seeds, pay for more fuel, and pay more for all of the above. So, which is really cheaper?

It is your call. If after your investigation and you see cobra still cheaper, why? Go for it. It has very good diseases resistance to be honest.

I only pity people who rely on consultants alone to do their farms. I also pity who see anytning cheap and takes it. They do not ask about the cons. This mentality must stop. If you want to be succesful, you need to go put of your comfort zone. If you need to import seeds, do it. If you need to pay extra $500 to import what you see is very good for you, do it. If you need to ask someone assit you get what may be more convenient for you, but your ego. I am concerned about you and not about any seller. What's my business with them? They are there to mak profit. That's it. But you are there to survive.

Note I do not recommend Shanty for anyone. I do not even knkw if its available now...and it has been like 3 years I have used it. So, do not think I am promoting it. Nope. It is just the a variety which I have chosen as a benchmark.

J just feel I should drop it here cos almost everyone emailing me asked me this question. I do not want to repeat answering if again.