A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size. They are commonly involved with perennial crops such oil palm, coffee, cocoa, rubber, Prunus africana, etc. Nurseries help in the preparation of planting material which is disease free for field planting and this often help in determining crop performance in the field. Nurseries can also be done in greenhouses and the difference is that seedlings are enclosed in the greenhouse.
Before preparing for a nursery, certain factors need to be considered such as,
- Site preparation and shade construction.
- Topography, nurseries normally require flat terrains though not too flat.
- Availability of water
- Soil types, here soils should not be water logged to be used for bag filling.
There are basically two main stages in nursery preparation, namely single and double stage nurseries.
The single stage here involves seeding in poly bags and from the nursery after a period of six months to eight months, seedlings are then planted directly in the field. The disadvantage is that some diseased seedlings will still be taken to the field, suffer rodent damage, etc.
As for the double staged nursery, it involves first seeding in already filled small poly bags and placed under shade for a period of four months depending on the kind of plant and is referred to here as pre-nursery.
Thereafter, they are further transplanted into larger poly bags in the main nursery and can be here for eight months or longer depending on farmer's readiness to plant.
The advantage of this stage is provides ample space for land preparation, diseased seedlings are checked at both stages referred to as culling, etc. The plant density here or distances determine period of seedlings to be at the nursery.
However both nurseries requires good top soil mixed with some sand so it should not become clayey in nature, and in cases where the terrains are considerably flat drain systems should to made to avoid water standing in the nurseries.
Water availability to serve in watering the nursery all year round by means of irrigation system as the case maybe but for small scale nurseries manual watering is done. The site is normally first prepared and shade constructed to reduce the high impact of solar radiation on tender plants that will lead to burning and scotching of leaves at the pre-nursery.
At the pre-nursery and sing stage nurseries respectively, shade removal is gradual and should be re-determined by the fact that the leaves of seedlings are turgid enough. This is also to allow plants capture enough sunlight and avoid etiolating of the plants. The seedlings in these nurseries requires manuring (fertilization) since they are in an artificial environment.
Here, weeding at the nursery is timely and more efficient as compared to traditional nurseries on farm beds or ridges, avoids nutrient competition between seedlings and weeds. Investing in nurseries is therefore a good business venture as seedling availability depending on the market pattern of your area do help in assuring that good quality and disease free planting material are actually planted in the field.
Furthermore, biodegradable poly bags could be used as a means to fight plastic pollution on our environment which should be our primary concern irrespective of our domain because no contribution is therefore small, as it will still create great impacts.
