BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - CATERING also to the exquisite pallet, the Kittitian Home Grown (KHG) hydroponics farm is establishing a name for itself as one of the providers of local and exotic vegetables and promoting healthy lifestyles of the people of the Federation.
The two-in-one farm sits at the back of the old Education Building in Greenland’s and at Needsmust and is operated by about 12 young men of the McKnight area.
Manager of KHG Leroy Greene recently spoke with SKNVibes about the progress of the operation since its inception some three years ago.
He said it was started by the Students Technical and Entrepreneurial Programme (STEP) with the government allowing for use of land at the back of the old Education Building.
More than 40 eager young individuals were involved in the programme in the initial stages but, as it progresses, there was falling away and only 12 remained.
He said an individual was flown in from Puerto Rico and took the men through a six-month training course in hydroponics, and while all are versed in the different strata of the cultivation method, “we have three or four young men who can run any hydroponic farm anywhere in the world”.
One of the farm’s operators spoke with SKNVibes and explained that hydroponics is a safe and more efficient way of producing many of the vegetables people love and need.
He said traditional farming would take approximately four months for some crops to mature, but with hydroponics crops go from seed form to harvestable produce within two months.
Hydroponics is based on the “verti-grow” method where pots are stacked upon each other and suspended by a vertical pole. In these pots are coconut husks, which have no nutritional value for the plants but merely provide an environment in which they can grow.
The plants are fed (liquid nutrients) and watered through an irrigation system.
At face value, the task of growing crops with the use of hydroponics would seem a simple one, but the farm operators explained that failure to pay keep attention to every detail would result in loss of profit.
The water with which the plants are irrigated must have the proper pH level. They must be checked daily for pests, and if they are present the appropriate action must be taken for the plants to grow.
At the old Education Building site stands 10 shade houses in which arugula, pak choy, peppers from Trinidad and Mexico, tomatoes from Rome, American bush beans, mixed greens, sweet peppers, mixed herbs, cucumbers, eggplants and a host of other vegetables are grown.
The young men who operate the farm all appear to have an avid and vested interested in the venture and see it as a means of gainful employment.
Within the past month, however, the farm has been vandalised on a number of occasions and several pieces of equipment and material were stolen.
The obvious effect is that whatever profit these young men would have made from their sale of their produce would have to be pumped back into replacing those stolen items.
The hydroponic farmers told SKNVibes that they are conscious of the “bad name” that the McKnight community has been given because of illegal activity, but “we are trying to being a good name to our community, to show people that good is in this community and good can come out of it”.
The promotion of healthy living, restoring the good name of McKnight are but two of their goals. The other is training primary and high school students in the hydroponics field.
“We have plans to invite a number of agriculture students from the high schools and even the primary schools so we can teach them and get them inclined to hydroponics, get them to understand what it is, how it works and the benefits of it.”
One of the men in particular suggested that the government should invest more in this form of agriculture because it saves time, energy and is more efficient compared to traditional farming methods.
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