STEEMIT AGRICULTURE; Crop Production #10

in #steemstem6 years ago

Welcome back to my blog dear readers, so far we are on Cashew production, a topic under my crop production series. Lets go on with the continuation of the last post.

CASHEW

Soil Management

Intercrop your cashew with other food crops like, cowpea, cassava, cocoyam and yam. Intercropping enable you to gain additional income before canopy closure of the crop, promote efficient use of land suppresses weeds in the plantation. The nutrient supplied to these components can also serve as indirect additional soil enrichment for cashew crop.

Integrated Soil Fertility Management

Cashew grows with little or no fertilizer. For optimum production apply 500g Urea, 1.200g single super phosphate and 200g muriate of Potash per tree per annum.

Safety, Use and Handling of Pesticides

Whenever pesticide is to be used in farms certain precautions must be followed to ensure its safe use. Even after use, the empty containers must be disposed very well by burying them. This precaution is very critical because misuse of pesticide could be harmful both to the crop and the person applying the pesticide. For this reason, instructions as stated on the label of the pesticide must be followed while only trained personnel should apply pesticide at recommended rate. The personnel should also wear protective clothing during application of pesticide.

Pests, Diseases and their Control

Common insect pests of cashew include stem girdler, fruit scrapers, rodents and large animals. Control measures include spraying of the trunk and branches with Rogor or Basudin 60EC at the rate of 30ml or 20mls per 4.2 liters of water respectively. For rodents and large animals, spraying should start right away in the nursery and in the plantation with insecticides mentioned above. In addition, local trap could be used to trap rodents.
Common diseases of cashew include inflorescence blight disease, leaf spot and cashew nut and apple rots. Application or combination of Benlate and Rogor at the rate of 1.5gm/1 and 1.0gm a.i/ha before full bloom will give good control. Prompt harvesting will also reduce the incidence of diseases.

Weed management

Weeding is crucial most especially at early stage of the crop. Poor weed control can lead to loss of seedlings stand. About 5 to 7 slashes are require per year to keep the weeds under check. Paraquate at a rate of 0.56 to 0.60k a.i 1/ha. (about 300ml/20 liter of water can also be used to control weed in cashew. Intercropping also reduce weed.

Crop Maturity, Harvesting and Storage

Cashew trees will begin to produce fruit in for fourth year. To harvest for the nuts, make sure the ground below the trees is well slashed so that it will be easy to pick. Allow the fruits drop from the trees and gather them from the ground. Remove the apple (the fleshy juicy part) from the seed or nut. Take the nuts and spread them out in the sun to dry. This takes three or three or the hands. Well dried ones will make a sharp rattle noise and a dull rattling noise indicated the need for further drying. The nuts are ready for sale when they are dried. For apple harvest at ripened state to avoid sour taste. The apples and nuts can be processed into various products and stored.
IMG_20180507_192921.jpg

Image of a Cashew Seed taken by me

We will continue from this point in the next post, thank you for reading.

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