Vegetables

First, the bad news: if you are starting a small vegetable farm, you will have to wait several years before nutrient recycling takes place in the soil.

What started as a lockdown project to provide fresh vegetables for the family quickly turned into a flourishing business after Teresa Theron started sending excess broccoli to local supermarkets.

I have become more and more conscious of how many farmers fail to appreciate the importance of soil quality. More is made of land preparation and fertilisation than improving the...

Beneficial insects used in integrated pest management (IPM) can sometimes completely eliminate the need for crop chemicals, or at least reduce chemical spraying to a minimum.

One of the crucial factors in seedling production is achieving a high and uniform germination. A loss in germination of just a few percent translates into a similar reduction in profit.

Some farmers, especially at the end of winter, use seedlings for their cucurbit crops in an attempt to get an early-growth advantage and better prices.

As mentioned in one of my previous articles polystyrene seedling trays are made by heating small polystyrene beads in a mould; they expand to fill the mould and thereby form...

When I mention seedlings in my articles, you may take it for granted that I’m referring to professionally grown seedlings in cavity seedling trays. The reason is that it is...

When the leaf miner first hit South Africa, the results were nothing short of devastating.

Iceberg lettuce has a good number of outer leaves, which help protect the head during transport and handling.

The African bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) is normally a sporadic pest; it tends to arrive on lettuce plants in bursts, rather than gradually increasing in number.

One pest that every bean farmer knows is the African bollworm. This tends to appear sporadically, rather than building up its population gradually.