BY SETHABILE MYENI
MBABANE – Eswatini farmers have been encouraged to take advantage of the current weather conditions by planting non-seasonal crops such as sweet potatoes.
Encouraging farmers was Senior Agricultural Officer Nelson Mavuso, this morning on letishisako program on EBIS.
He said sweet potatoes are hardly affected by the extreme heat from the sun, hailstorms and strong winds because they are grown underground and that the chances of getting a good yield are always high.
“This is to encourage those who gave up on maize farming the previous year because of the forecast predictions which said that the country will experience Elnino during the season of rain and around the time when they usually plant maize. Hence, we encourage them to consider planting other crops that can never be affected such as sweet potato whenever such predictions arise in the future,” he said.
He also congratulated those who took the risk of planting maize because the rains did not disappoint in some places and further encouraged those who still want to take advantage of the remaining part of the rainy season to do so.
“They should close the gap which opened when they were hesitant with maize, now is the season for beans and cowpeas (tinhlumaya) they should use their fields that were not used for maize farming to plant those. There is ultra-short season varieties for maize some call it logwaja they only take two months to be ready, farmers can still try it,” said Mavuso.
He further mentioned that the wet middle veld and dry middle veld weather would favour the ultra-short season varieties.
