Kazibwe earns Shs3m a month from eggplants

I am Balamu Kazibwe a resident of Seeta-Nyiize village in Kangulumira Sub-county, Kayunga District. I am a commercial farmer involved in eggplant and coffee growing. Before I joined commercial farming, I was working as an agricultural extension officer. I decided to abandon this work to put into practice what I was teaching farmers. I had seen many of them grow rich using the knowledge I was sharing with them.

When I started farming in 1998, I began with growing tomatoes while at the same time carrying out piggery.

However, I realised that even though tomatoes were well-paying, they were capital and labour- intensive. The other thing was that tomato harvesting lasted a short time (one and a half months) which means that if they ripened when their supply on the market is high, I would incur losses. So I decided to make a switch

Early this year, I decided to venture into eggplant growing alongside the coffee. I opted for eggplants because they are not capital and labour intensive like tomatoes. Tomatoes need to be mulched, sprayed with insecticides and fertilisers which is not the case with eggplants.

In addition, eggplants are fairly drought resistant and can be harvested for about one year.
Due to the long harvesting period, I earn more from them.

How I started
I bought eggplant seeds from an agro-shop. I then prepared a seedbed by ensuring that the soil is soft and well-drained. I then added mixed farm-yard manure in the soil. After a week, I turned the soil to ensure the manure was well mixed and decomposed.

After three weeks, I put the seeds in the bed by sowing. However, one can also plant them in lines or even pots. I prefer potting because it makes transfer of seedlings to the main garden easier and safer.

When they germinated I also applied insecticides such as Dudu cyper and fertilisers such as NPK.

After one and a half months in the seedbed, the seedlings are transplanted to the main garden.  It is important to transplant the seedlings when their shoot is strong enough to avoid damage from insects.

I carried out the transplanting in the evenings to avoid them being scotched by heat from the sun.
The shallow pits in the main garden were 2 by 2 feet in between plants.

In the pits I applied farm-yard manure to boost the soil fertility. However, if the soil is fertile, it is not necessary to put fertilisers in the pits since eggplants can do well even with diminutive fertility.  I own two and half acres of eggplants. In this acreage there are about 10,000 plants.

I made sure the garden was weed-free because weeds can compete with the vegetables for soil nutrients, leading to poor health plants.
It is also important to spray the eggplants with insecticides twice a month, because insects can damage the vegetables by eating the leaves, shoot and roots.

When the vegetable started flowering, I had to lessen the number of times I apply the insecticides because insecticides harm bees and other insects which pollinate the flowers.
When they are killed or turned away, the yields will be poor.
It is also essential to apply boosters such NPK on the plants at a time when they are flowering so that they can become healthy, strong and develop vigorous leaves.

Eggplants take about two months from the time they were planted in the main garden for a farmer to start harvesting the vegetables.
They mature very fast, which allows me to make harvests once every week. It is also advisable not to leave the eggplants to ripen especially in times when there is no market as these fruits will stress the plant. A stressed plant will produce small eggplants and can sometimes wither.

Because the eggplants are young, every week I harvest between 10- 15 bags of the vegetable.
However, when they reach maturity I expect to harvest between 30-35 bags every week. Currently, I earn about Shs3m from eggplants because I sell Shs50,000 per bag for the 15 bags I harvest every week. But within two months, I hope to earn at least Shs4.5m a month.

Market
Eggplants have a big local and external market, especially in south Sudan and Kenya.

During dry spells when there is scarcity of other vegetables on the market, the price of a bag reaches Shs100,000.
The buyers buy directly from the garden. During scarcity, they pay me cash but during high supply, they pay me later after they have sold.

My main market is South Sudan, Kenya and Kampala. However I also sell to locals who come to the garden. I sell a calabash at Shs1,000.

Challenges
One of the biggest challenges are insects and chicken, which damage the plant. The insects eat leaves, roots and shoots causing the plants to wither. On the other hand, chicken eat flowers, which if not kept at bay can result into poor yields.

To avert this, I spray the plants with insecticides to chase away insects and for the chicken I have put barriers to restrict them from accessing the garden.

Another challenge is the wilt disease, which makes the plants to wither. This disease has no cure but can be controlled by using clean planting materials (seedlings). It is important not to plant eggplants where vegetables such as tomatoes were planted. This is because tomatoes too are affected by wilt disease, which means that soil could still be having the wilt disease.

The other challenge is the insecurity in South Sudan, which is my main market, leading to a drop in prices.