By BONIFACE MWANGI
For the last one and half years, Joseph Gitonga has earned the reputation of a grafted-apple seller in Tetu and some of the neighbouring districts in Nyeri.
The 55-year-old single father of four developed the passion of grafting the fruit after he was urged by an agriculture extension officer to try his hand on growing the Ann Apple species on his one-acre farm at Miagayu-ini village back in 2003.
To start with, Mr Gitonga bought three seedlings from King’ong’o Prison which was the first institution to start selling the seedlings in Nyeri.
To his surprise, the seedlings grew healthy and stronger and after two and half years, they bore their first fruits which were “big and sweet” according to Mr Gitonga.
“I bought each seedling at Sh150 and since I feared the fruit might turn to be a failure, I decided to start with the three. Surprisingly, the three trees grew well and gave me a good harvest,” he said.
Lured by the quick growth of the trees and the reasonable harvest, Mr Gitonga decided to plant 77 more seedlings in a section of his farm where he had been planting maize and beans.
Although the area is good for tea growing due to its weather, the apple fruits are doing relatively well and now more than 10 farmers in Mr Gitonga’s neighbourhood have started growing them.
In Miagayu-ini there are two harvests a year. The trees frequently bloom in July and again in September, the fruits ripen in August and November.
The farmer says that initially, there were ready market for his produce but two years later things changed for the worse after fruit traders started importing apples from South Africa and Israel.
Mr Gitonga used to sell a kilogramme of his produce at Sh180 to a supermarket in Nyeri and another Nairobi. To him, it was a good business than that of growing maize and beans which didn’t do that good in his region.
“On a good day, I used to get at most Sh240 from selling a kilogramme of apples,” he said.
To guard against price fluctuations and competition from imported fruits, Mr Gitonga opted to intercrop his apples with sweet passion fruit which were also fetching good prices in the market.
“My aim was to thrive in apple farming which requires little attention compared to maize and beans farming,” says Mr Gitonga.
Last year, the determined farmer decided to start grafting the apples from those in his farm.
To start with, he carefully removes rootstock that have attained six millimetres before budding them on the scion of an Ann apple that is almost to produce a fruit.
Then he plants them on a small section of his shamba. After three weeks, the scion either shoots a flower or a fruit and this is when the farmer transplants them into small polythene bags ready for sale.
Mr Gitonga says the suckers grow naturally on the base of the apple trees. A seedling of his grafted apples costs Sh500.
The ‘Ann Apple’ is roundish, even and regular in outline. When ripe, its skin turns yellow with patches of pale brown, or ashen grey.
The species is also very tender and fine grained and juicy. The origin of this variety is unknown, but it has long existed in America and Israel.
When he started grafting the apples two years ago, he says, market for the seedling has grown tremendously with time being unable to satisfy the market.
To lure more farmers to buy his seedlings, Mr Gitongo is now searching for ‘water apples’ species which he says does well in wet areas.
“I want to give my clients a variety to choose from. Apart from that, I want to lease more two acres so that I can plant this species of apples which is rare to get in the market and has more advantages that any other,” he said.
Apart from Kieni and some parts of Mukurwe-ini, the other districts in Nyeri county receive rainfall fairly well-spaced throughout the year, a key requirement for the Water Apple.
The water apple, commonly cultivated in India occurs naturally from southern India to eastern Malaysia.
It is also widely grown in southeastern Asia, and Indonesia. However, in the Philippines, it grows as though wild in the provinces of Mindanao, Basilan, Dinagat and Samar.
It has never been widely distributed but is occasionally grown in Trinidad and Hawaii.
In 1927, it was introduced into Puerto Rico but survived only after a few years.
The fruit is mostly recognised in two forms–one white-fruited and the other red, the colour of the latter developing from the base upward. However, the flavour of some types is quite acid.
To achieve a good harvest of the water apples, a farmer is required to provide a spacing of 20 to 26 ft (6-8 m) distance from tree-to-tree.
Source: Business Daily
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