One day my big bro handed me a ripe purple passion fruit to eat started with 16 plants of passion fruit to eat. I wished it, cut it open into halves and while eating the tasty first half, a thought occurred to me. Why don’t you take out some seeds and plant your own? And that’s how the passion fruit farm was born. I propagated the few seeds I had spared which I later planted in a nursery.
Later on I chose a nice field which I had previously been using to grow vegetables for the project. It was a perfect place away from tall trees which would mean enough sunshine for the fruits. It was also located somehow close to home meaning I could keep an eye on thieves.
From the about twenty-something seeds I had put in the nursery only a couple managed to sprout. Sixteen seedlings to be exact which I later transplanted fifteen in the chosen field where I had already dug half a meter deep holes, three meters apart, covered with farmyard manure mixed top soil and later mulched with straw.
The fruits were doing fine, until someone uprooted one seedling leaving behind 14 which survived and as I’m writing to you this, I’ve already tasted a couple and keep flowering and fruiting. Some of the management practices I’ve done include staking which I had to use tree poles about two and a half meters high and a combination of binding wire and ropes.
I had left three suckers per plant which I later learned from this Facebook group I had joined that was not advisable and now I only maintain two per plant. In a few weeks I’ll be selling my fruits and the plan is to increase the population. I’ve already put down a couple of seeds in a nursery in an effort to expand. God willing by January 2025 I will be transplanting an additional over a hundred seedlings.
Recently a friend who is also interested in the venture with plans to start his farm soon, gave me an idea about planting pumpkins as a cover crop in between the fruits which I followed and by yesterday I had planted a number of seeds from different varieties some of which I had purchased in Nairobi.
I’m passionate enough about this passion fruit project. I know I have the potential to fo all the way. But as they say, only time will tell.