50 percent of the red onions in Kenya are imported from Tanzania, as indicated by Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) 2014 report. Kenyan Farmers have been doing their best to address the demand and close the gap, but there is still more supply to be achieved. This makes the Red Bulb Onion a very attractive commercial investment for the Kenyan market at the moment, since local production is not enough.

Major types of onions farmed in Kenya are bulb onions and spring onions. The best areas suited for farming being Karatina, Oloitoktok, Naivasha, Kieni, Emali and Mai Mahiu.

Bulb...

One of the lessons for beginners in chilies is to always have a market in mind when you start planting chilies. Someone has to be literary waiting for your chilies to pick them as soon as you harvest. Try free-styling just like that and you will be fighting frustrations from your over-ripping chilies with no real buyer to buy your them and a swarm of brokers telling you how to minimize your loses by selling to them as if they are buying rejects.

Before you begin planting you have to make sure that your market is viable enough for you to cover your productions costs within the first 2 to 3...

Chilies are good, they add magic to every spoon of food you take, and even more, they can spice up your wallet too. They are a good product, they don't give a lot of stress, whether harvested green, or left on the farm to turn red, you will still get a buyer. If you don't get a buyer soon, you can harvest them, dry them and sell them as dried chilies. Either way, chilies won't stress you much as compared to your other highly perishable produce.

This kind of analogy got Judy to join the chilies club. She is a newbie who has recently delivered her third harvest to an exporter thanks to...

Growing capsicums is relatively easy and that's why it has picked amongst many farmers especially in urban areas. They don't burn too much of your resources like having to weed them day in day out. You can grow them anywhere even on your backyard as long as there is a good breeze and a bit of direct sunshine, or plant them in pots and place them on your veranda.

Despite being relatively easy to grow them, there are few problems you are likely to face with your capsicums. One of those problems is blossom end rot, a disease caused by insufficient calcium in your crops. Calcium is necessary...

With this warm weather, capsicum farmers better be on the lookout for powdery mildew. This is one of those dangerous fungal disease that spreads like bush fire in your fields. A severe infestation on your fields can cause a lot of damages to your expected yields.

This disease primarily affects leaves of the capsicums. Other parts mostly affected are stems and flowers. It occurs at any stage of crop development with the most common affected stage being the fruiting phase or just before onset of the fruiting phase.

If your crops are infected, you will notice a white, powdery growth (let's...

It's the warm season. Farmers are happy that their tomatoes are finally going to receive the much sunlight needed for the fruit to grow bigger, juicier and firmer. What most probably don't know is that with the warm weather sets in the most dreaded disease. The monster that can wipe a farmer's field clean : Bacteria Wilt.

Bacteria Wilt is caused by the pathogen bacterium Ralstonia Solanacearum and is quite common in the moist & humid sandy soils. This bacterium lives in the soil and will work its way quickly through the roots and up the stem of the plants.  It's spread by...

Oranges, together with lemons and other citrus fruit varieties are one of the most important fruit crops in Kenya ranking fourth after bananas, pineapples and mangoes (MOA 2007).  Locally, they are mostly sourced from the Coastal areas, Eastern, and Rift valley provinces. According to Agricultural Development Corporation, local supply doesn’t meet demand and that’s why we import most of citrus from other countries. These countries include our neighbors Uganda and Tanzania.

For the last four months, prices of oranges have been rising in most of the markets in Kenya.  Mombasa has...

Last Sunday, December 21^st, Deputy President William Ruto announced that government will buy maize from farmers at a price of KES 2800 per 90 kg bag. This is KES 600 rise from the quoted prices by agriculture Cabinet Secretary Felix Koskei earlier that week.

This new prices are a good relief for  farmers since maize prices in majority of the towns has been worsening and is set to decline further with other maize producing area set to begin harvesting in this month of December and early 2015.

Prices had dropped from an average of KES 2800 per 90 kg bag since the beginning of October to...

Cucumber is one of the fairly-warm-climate crops which cannot withstand water logging requiring only 500mm of annual rainfall to grow. It’s an easy to grow kind of crop which you can introduce into your backyard and also fast growing taking 2 to 2 months to fully mature and be harvested. They are grown for their immature fruit and can be categorized into four types based on their fruit length. This four types include Long cucumbers (over 30 cm), Midi cucumbers (18 -24 cm), Mini cucumbers (15 -19 cm) and Cocktail cucumbers (Less than 15 cm). 

As we entered the last quarter of the year,...

Despite its declining productivity, potato is one of the most consumed agricultural produce in Kenya falling second to maize. This is due to the rising demand from the fast food industry as urbanization in Kenya hits the roof. Shangi is the most consumed variety in Kenya beating all the other varieties in the market and has a fast maturity rate taking only 2 months to fully mature. The other potatoes take approximately 3 months and above. Most of these potatoes are sourced from Molo.

Since beginning of October this year, prices of shangi potatoes have been increasing in majority of markets...