You won’t go wrong by growing passion fruits

Nancy Wambui used to grow horticulture crops like vegetables, French beans and snow peas. However, she was compelled to ditch the crops when it dawned on her that they were not viable. She shifted to growing passion fruits and courgettes; crops she says have little challenges.

On her three-quarter-acre farm in Sagana, Nyeri County, the farmer grows passion fruits, which she harvests weekly and sells to a customer who buys them and sells in Karatina market.

“I ventured into passion fruits farming in 2020. The crop has fewer challenges compared to the crops that I was growing initially,” says Wambui,42, adding that when she started, the fruits were being sold at Sh70 per kilo.

“There is a customer who comes and buys here at home. I harvest every week. I harvest from 200kgs and above per week. Right now, the price is higher. I sell at Sh120 per kilo.”

Apart from the customer whom the farmer says is reliable, there are also those who purchase the fruits at home.

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Wambui, who grows purple passion fruits, says that she buys seedlings at Sh10 each, and she currently has 500 plants.

She attends field days and the skills she gains she applies in her farming activities, which include pests and disease control measures.

The farmer, who is assisted by her husband when he is at home, says that the only main challenge is the high cost of inputs such as fertilisers.

Apart from passion fruits, Wambui also grows courgette on an eighth-acre farm.

“I bought seeds from Kenya Seed at Sh300 for an eighth acre,” says the farmer, adding that courgettes take 45 days to be ready for harvest.

Like passion fruits, Ms Wambui also has a reliable client who buys her courgettes at home for Sh40 per kilo. However, the price can go down to as low as Sh10 per kilo, when there is too much of the produce in the market.

Though she reveals that she spent a lot of money to get the venture off the ground, in production cost, the returns have enabled her recover the money.

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“I spent Sh270,000 on passion fruits till I started harvesting. For courgettes, I only spent Sh10,000.”

Carol Mutua from Egerton University’s Department of Crops, Horticulture and Soils, says the optimum temperature for purple passion fruits to grow is between 18 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius. For yellow passion fruits, it is between 25 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees Celsius for.

She says that purple varieties do better at higher altitudes than the yellow types.

“Yellow types, on the other hand, tend to yield higher and are more resistant to diseases. The purple variety is more acidic, varies in taste and juiciness with an intense aromatic scent and round in shape. The yellow variety is bigger, with similar taste but possibly less aromatic,” says the expert.

The crop thrives in well-drained soils in areas with high rainfall.

“Excess rainfall causes poor fruit set and encourages diseases mainly leaf and fruit rusts. For good production, passion fruits do well in a variety of soils, which be reasonably deep and fertile with soil pH ranging from 6.0-6.5,” she explains.