Building a food secured Africa
BENEFITS OF GOOD SPACING IN VEGETABLE FARMING
Vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and so on grow in different ways. Because of their structure, it’s important to know how well to space them to get the most out of them. Apart from their growing pattern, it can also be said that spacing vegetable plants could reduce certain risks that can jeopardize their yield.
Crops like cucumber, which climb, require good spacing within rows and in between rows in order to spread well. Watermelon, on the other hand, requires wide area spacing in order to allow it to crawl to its potential.
Moving on to crops like peppers, garden eggs, tomatoes, and sweet corn, you will realize that because they spread their branches. A considerable level of spacing is required for them to thrive.
Crops like carrots and onions, which go deep into the soil, require little spacing, as what is needed is just for their roots to form.
Therefore, we can say that giving good spacing in vegetable farming is advantageous in the following ways:
- It gives room for the crops of choice to perform well. Crops do well when they are allowed to grow freely.
- Allows proper aeration in the field where they are planted. When crops grow, they have the tendency to choke each other when given little spacing. This is because there is no proper ventilation, and that alone can hamper their performance.
- Gives farmers access to carry out routine practices in the field. Major activities after planting like manure application, weeding, pruning, spraying, harvesting, and so on requires space. Especially along the furrows, to enable free movement and easy accessibility to the crops. When proper space is not given, a farmer could damage the crops in the process of struggling to gain access to them.
- Reduces the risk of disease circulation in the field. Diseases can easily be eradicated when your farm is well spaced, but they can become a disaster the other way around.
- Limits the further spread of pests.
The list of benefits of adopting good spacing in vegetable farming is inexhaustible. So we encourage you, as a farmer, to adopt good spacing on your farm.
Watch our video on our YouTube Channel for better insight https://youtu.be/OWqnN6wc8II.