Watermelon Farming: How to make Ksh 108,000 from an 1/8 acre

Watermelon intensive farming on 1/8 acre: Many farmers today have very small pieces of land which requires intensive management for high returns per unit area. Choose high yielding varieties particularly for small pieces of land.

Watermelon can be spaced at 1-1.5 M from row to row and 1-1.5M from plant to plant depending on variety, farmers experience in disease control and climate.

A piece of land 15M×30Metres or 50ftx 100ft, planted at a spacing of 1.5M from row to row and 1.5M from plant to plant gives a plant population of 200 plants.

Allow each plant to bear 3 fruits to ensure good size, and the yield/ returns will be as follows for the varieties below:-

Sugar Baby / Crimson Sweet (4kg average fruit size) = 200plants x 3fruits x 4kg = 2,400kgs of melons x Ksh 20= Ksh 48,000

Nzuri, Asali Early scarlet F1and Charleston Grey with 9kg average fruit size) = 200 x 3 x 9 = 5,400kgs of watermelons x ksh 20 =108,000

Sukari F1 variety 7kg = 200 x 3 x 7 = 4,200kgs melons x ksh 20=Ksh84, 000.

Cost of production is approximately 15,000/= for all above varieties.

(Food for thought)Creative ways to market your watermelons:

Did you know that you can grow square watermelons? Like you can see from the pictures below, you can use boxes to grow watermelons of any shape.

Square melons are on very high demand in some countries, especially in supermarkets since its very easy to arrange them.  Its also easy to ship square water melons over long distances compared to the round ones