Nuns spread the gospel with onions, tomatoes convent

Sisters of Precious Blood Riruta Convent, Kawangware, with workers in their farm. PHOTO | LEOPOLD OBI | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

• Adjacent to the greenhouses on half-an-acre, giant cabbages, beetroots, capsicum and bulb onions sit in neat rows, with drip irrigation pipes running next to the crops.
• Sr Scholastica Kituli, the convent’s accountant, expresses joy at the ventures, noting they have cut the institution’s expenses on food.
• Food from the garden also caters for about 200 former street children, who are studying at the nearby Amani Primary School and at a rehabilitation centre.

By LEOPOLD OBI
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Inside a greenhouse erected on two acres at the Precious Blood Riruta Convent in Nairobi, nuns smile as they inspect the fruiting melons and green peas (minji).

The nuns grow tomatoes, green peas, carrots and sweet melon in two greenhouses measuring 9m by 15m.

Adjacent to the greenhouses on half-an-acre, giant cabbages, beetroots, capsicum and bulb onions sit in neat rows, with drip irrigation pipes running next to the crops.

Sr Scholastica Kituli, the convent’s accountant, expresses joy at the ventures, noting they have cut the institution’s expenses on food.

Food from the garden also caters for about 200 former street children, who are studying at the nearby Amani Primary School and at a rehabilitation centre.

“The pupils come from needy families. We chose to meet the costs of their feeding programmes to motivate them to attend school regularly,” says Sr Scholastica of the project that was started last September after a visit to a convent in Karen, Nairobi.

Sr Scolastica, with a team of other nuns, were impressed by huge cabbages and onions their colleagues at the convent were growing.

The team borrowed the idea from the convent, with drip irrigation and the greenhouses proving a success.

Initially, she explains, they had failed terribly while growing the crops in open fields and without using irrigation.

“We developed our seedlings in a nursery and planted but only a few crops germinated. We had no good information on crop farming, so we just watered the crops without paying attention to the amount of water needed,” she recalls.

Water used on the farm flows by gravity from a tank raised some metres above the ground. The water is regularly mixed with soluble fertiliser, with the solution dripping at the crop’s root.

“The irrigation kit comes as a package that include a greenhouse, drip irrigation system, tank, farm chemicals to be used for one season, fertiliser and 1,000 seeds of tomatoes,” explains Patrobers Wambua, an agronomist at Amiran Kenya.

The agronomist says drip irrigation in comparison to other methods of watering crops is more effective because it ensures that a crop receives just the right amount of water it requires, therefore, there is no loss of valuable water and soil nutrients through surface run off.

“As the crop grows, its water requirement also goes up,” Wambua quips, noting that farmers can use the hand check method to determine the soil moisture content.

This is done by scooping the garden soil then squeezing it. The soil with the right moisture content leaves wet outline on the hand and not water.