By Olivia Chipeta Nkolokosa
Article number 5
This week we will look at principles of nursery management. A lot of people ask questions like my seed is not germinating, what could be the reason or how much water should I apply. We will investigate some of the things to keep in mind when we want to establish a vegetable nursery. The first principle is to know whether your crop requires one or not.
Vegetable crops are either direct planted or sown in a nursery before planting out. It is important to know whether your seed will require either or both treatments. For a start, some vegetable seeds will require to be sown on a nursery bed due to the nature of the seed. Small, seeded vegetables are difficult to handle when directly planted.
The labour becomes tedious when it comes to management of the seedlings on a larger scale. Sowing on a nursery bed will ensure that you do all the required activities on a small piece of land which can easily be managed. However, though some vegetables are small seeded, it is not recommended to sow them on a nursery bed initially due to their nature.
For example, carrot is small seeded but sowing it on a nursery leads to significant economic losses. This is so because carrot produce a tap root that becomes eventually becomes the fruit. If you take this seedling and transplant, most of the carrot fruits become deformed, they take the shape of how they were settled when they were being transplanted. It is therefore necessary to know if the plant requires either or both methods of sowing.
Some large, seeded vegetables like cucumbers, watermelons are mostly directly planted though they can be sown on the nursery. Since they do not have any problems when it comes to management when directly planted, it is important that they should be directly planted than sownbin a nursery bed. This will reduce production costs. Always ensure that you have more than enough seeds sown for supplying when the other seeds have failed to germinate.
There are two types of nursery “beds” which are open field and containerized. The open field is the one that we construct a nursery bed according to the seedlings that we will require. The basic underlying principle is that the width is around 1m-1.2 m for easy management. Length will depend on the number of seedlings expected. Containerized type of nursery involves a mobile type of nursery which is in form of a tray which has cells. Seeds are sown directly or on the filed beds then transplanted into the trays. These offer an almost 100℅ chance of translating success because when transplanting, the root system stays intact with the soil.
When you are sowing seeds, it is important to consider the type of soil being down into, the depth at which you will sow the seeds, the strength of the covering (soil/sand) that will be used and the level of watering. Seeds and seedlings do not require a lot of water in early stages as it makes the seed to rot, and seedlings have damping off diseases. Therefore, water in amount and frequency should depend on stage of the plant and type of soil, among others.
Olivia Chipeta Nkolokosa holds a BSc in Horticulture from Malawi, MSc Plant Breeding from South Africa. She writes in her personal capacity as an Agronomist.
