Hello everyone in the wonderful homesteading community. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the weather wherever you are. And I hope you are making good use of your time as a homesteader.
I’ll always say this “living a life as a homesteader is better and very comfortable”. I'm sure a lot of people in this community agree with me. One of the best things I love as a homesteader is that it is a life of self-sufficiency. Homesteading allows you to take full control of your food sources. You get to monitor your food and make sure everything works just as you like.
In this article, I’ll talk about how my cousin and I harvested some bunches of plantain.
In Nigeria, there are certain crops that are simple to grow and very rewarding, one of them is plantain. Plantain is one of the plants that is grown by a large percentage of the farmers in Nigeria. Most Nigerians, if not all, love eating plantain, that is why farmers grow it. Plantain can be cooked, boiled, fried, or roasted, and some even eat it raw. Besides the fact that plantain is loaded with a lot of health benefits, it is very delicious, especially when fried (that is how I love mine). I mean, who doesn’t love fried plantain?
In the last article I posted in this community, I talked about maize and when (the season) to plant them, but unlike maize, plantain does not have a particular season, which means you can plant them at any time of the year. As I said earlier, plantain is a very simple crop to grow, but a lot of people have failed to grow them successfully. Why? Because they did not take the right step toward a successful plantain farm. Pest and weed control, use of fertilizers and manure, and planting in good land (soil type) are one of the things to consider when growing a plantain farm.
I remember when my cousins and I talked about how we didn’t like buying plantains in the market. Here in Nigeria, the price of plantain is very ridiculous. I heard it is even worse in some states like Lagos. Another reason why we didn’t like the idea of buying plantain from marketers was that some of these marketers use chemicals to ripen the plantain. After a few days, we finally took the bold step to start a plant farm. We did a lot of hard work to make sure our plantain will be successful; clearing the land, removing stumps, planting, watering (every 2 days), fertilizer application, manure applications, and some other activities. Today, there’s a big smile on my face because our sweat and hard work finally paid off.
My cousin and I harvested 6 bunches of plantain. We left them for too long before harvesting, so some of them had started to ripen. Now it’s time to start frying😌😌
Some of the challenges we faced
Pest; when growing plantain, you should be always prepared to get rid of pests because they can damage and prevent good yield. We battled pests with the use of pesticides.
Weed; we all know what weeds can do to our crops. Just like pests, they also prevent good yield. We got rid of the weeds manually.
ALL IMAGES ARE MINE.