Tired of maize, I switched to avocados and now I’m happy

Peter Chege moves from one avocado tree to another scouting for pests on the leaves and the tiny fruits.

The trees are at the fruiting stage thus he does not want anything to go wrong. Chege grows the fruits in Likia, Njoro.

The area traditionally is a maize, potatoes and beans zone, but Chege took a different path, specialising in growing the Hass avocado variety, which he intercrops with beans and vegetables in a bid to diversify his agribusiness.

“The beans fix nitrogen in the soil, thus, making it rich for my avocados besides making me utilise my farm well and make more money,” says Chege.

A certified Horticultural Crop Development (HCDA) grafter, Chege sells grafted seedlings at Sh150 each.

“I switched to the fruits about three years ago after growing maize and potatoes for several years and earning little.”

“In a good season, I would produce 30 90kg bags of maize and sell 20 of them at an average price of Sh1,500,” he adds.

Further, he would harvest an average of 25 110kg bags of potatoes, which he sold to middlemen at Sh1,500 each.

But all that is now behind him. In his two-and-a-half-acre farm, Chege has 400 Hass avocado trees, 125 of which are already earning him income.

“A month ago, I sold fruits worth Sh15,000 at Sh7 each to a horticultural export company. There is good business in the fruits as long as one has reliable market.”

“My earnings would have been higher were it not that some fruits were affected by the dry spell,” adds the father of seven.

His seedlings business is also upbeat. Chege says he has so far sold 2,000 seedlings, earning him a total of Sh300,000. And during our visit, he had 2,000 more ready for sale.

He learnd the trade from a fruit farm in the county where he worked in 2008.

“My duty was to oversee the planting of 180 Hass avocado trees. After about two years, when the trees started bearing fruits, the owner discovered that only 20 were pure Hass variety while the rest were Fuerte,” recalls Chege

He was trained on how to trim the Fuerte trees and graft them with the Hass tree.

Determined to also eke a living from avocado farming, he quit, bought 45 Hass avocado seedlings worth Sh9,000 and planted them.

“After two years, I invited HCDA officials to inspect them and they approved my work. I later started grafting and selling seedlings,” he says, adding he is a licensed dealer.

During grafting, Chege ensures both the stock and the scion are disease-free.

He then places the scion into the stock. The cut surfaces of the scion and stock are then fitted together and bound tightly with a piece of cloth and covered well with a polythene sheet to prevent harmful infections from bacteria or fungus, and loss of water and plant sap.

“I use a Hass scion and the stock is from any other variety, including Fuerte,” says Chege, adding aphids are among the pests he guards against.

He is now happy growing avocado than maize and potatoes.

“I do not need to buy chemicals to spray my crop all the time as I used to do with the potatoes. I only harvested maize once a year while I expect to harvest avocados at least four times.”

His biggest challenge, however, is water. Sometimes when it does not rain, he has to fetch water for irrigating his seedlings from a dam 2km away.

Lilian Jeptanui, a horticultural expert at Egerton University, says avocados can be intercropped with other crops as long as they are not deep-rooted.

“Crops such as legumes help in fixing nitrogen, which is an essential nutrient for both the tree and the fruits. But do not intercrop with other crops that grow into trees because they will have deep-roots which will compete with those of avocados,” she says.

She adds that intercropping avocados with other crops makes economic sense as one utilises space in between the fruit trees.