Jani Farm

Seven Eggs that were stuck inside an Egg Bound Hen 😢  This is one of the hardest experiences I've had with chickens. I had purchased a beautiful kienyeji hen that I thought would be perfect for brooding new chicks.  She was also a very good layer. But a few months after she arrived, she stopped laying and became lethargic. She was not eating.  I realized that her belly was swollen and she had not laid an egg for several days. With a little research, I realized that she was egg bound .  I could not help her pass the eggs, so I made the decision to process the hen. She had seven eggs stuck inside her. Some were rotten because they had been in there for days on end. 

Mystery Beans with Red Flowers  Sometime last year, I bought some beans I had never seen before. They were quite large. I also loved the taste.  Because I had never seen them before, I decided to plant some of them.  Well, the beans survived the rainy season and they are now flowering with bright red flowers. I have never seen beans with red flowers before. After googling around for a bit, I learned that they are called scarlet runner beans.  I have only seen white, pink, and purple flowers on beans. So the red flowers were a beautiful surprise. I absolutely love them and I look forward to the podding and harvesting stages.  There is another batch of mystery bean that I also want to plant. These are also large, but they are plain brown in color. I'm probably going to plant them after harvesting something else. Because right now I have three bean fields, a maize field, an onion field, a garlic field, and a tomato field.  Last year, I had a problem with ...

An onion at bulbing stage This is not my first time farming onions. I once planted a crop of Jambar f1 onions. The results were good. I got large red onion bulbs that I sold to a muhindi at 50 bob per kg. They were very, very large. It was a quarter of an acre.  Jambar is supposed to mature in 90 days, but because I am in a cooler climate, the onion took much longer to bulb. I am not complaining because the harvest was good.  That was several years ago, and this time I am doing red creole onion. It is an open pollinated variety that I expect will produce more average-sized, red bulbs. There is an older crop that is already bulbing and I have top dressed it with CAN. So far I haven't applied any synthetic fertilizer because I had applied plenty of goat manure.  But now that it is raining, I can apply some CAN to speed up last minute growth.  I am hoping to convert to fully using organic fertilizers within the next two or three years. If I can compost the st...

Garlic bulbing I've started experimenting with growing garlic.  My process is really simple.  1. Buy a few garlic bulbs from the store 2. Separate the individual cloves 3. Put the cloves in water to make them wet 4. Throw the garlic cloves into a juala or a carrier bag 5. Throw the bag of wet garlic cloves into the fridge for 40 days. 6. Plant each clove into soil mixed with manure. By this time, all the cloves will have rooted. 7. Wait.  Garlic Plant The Results So far the cloves I panted have grown into a round bulb. It looks like an onion, lol. I have not seen cloves yet.  But I am giving them more time. If they don't grow into cloves by the end of the season, I might give the next batch of garlic cloves a longer stay in the fridge. I figure I have nothing to lose. I can always make garlic paste. Other than that, I don't yet have a success story with this. I will post an update as soon as I succeed at growing a proper garlic bulb with cloves.  ...

Sarat is an indigenous vegetable. It is also called Ethiopian Kale, or Kanzira. The plant itself looks like a miniature kale. But Sarat is not a kale variety. It's really a mustard. Where to get Sarat Seeds I have not seen the seeds in any agrovet, but you can get them from the market women. They sell it in spoonfuls. One tablespoon of sarat seeds costs 20 Kenya shillings. Sarat seeds look like kale seeds.  How to Sow Sarat Seeds Sarat seeds are planted directly into the growing bed. There is no transplanting of seedlings. You prepare the planting bed, mix in plenty of manure, and spread the seeds. Try to spread them so there is a an inch between the seeds. Cover the Sarat seeds with a thin layer of soil.  Sarat matures fast. You can harvest within six weeks.  How to Harvest Sarat There are two ways to harvest Sarat. You can do complete harvesting by pulling the entire plant.  You can also harvest part of the plant, leaving it to grow more leaves for your next meal....

Managu This is my first time planting managu from seed and I have loved the experience so far. The seedbed did very well. Germination rates were high. That stage was a complete success. My problems started after transplanting . We are in the dry season, and the usual short reason rains have failed, forcing us to rely on our hose pipe. Managu is high-maintenance crop that requires lots of water. I will still get to harvest the vegetable for a while, but it is likely to flower earlier than expected.  My next managu crop will be during the long rains . I am now going to focus more of my attention on sagaa and sarat .