By Christopher Sialwindi
Sugarcane is a crop were one cane make good money with minimum inputs.
Let me just share a few tips about the crop.
Sugarcane is a tropical crop meaning it does well in the Zambian weather.
Zambia has the best sugarcane growing conditions in the world, its potential yield is above 150tons per hectare.
The crop can be grown on a wide range of soils from sandy loamy to heavy clay loamy soils. Its annual water requirement is about 2000mm per annum meaning in the dry season the deficit has to be met through irrigation.
As earlier mentioned sugarcane thrives well in hot weather conditions, it can be grown throughout the year how ever the best planting period is from January to July.
The crop should be planted in deep ploughed soils with a fine tilth. Cane sets should be laid in furrows of about 1.0m
to 1.65m inter row spacing, this could give you a plant populations of about 150,000 to 200,000 sticks of cane per hectare.
Like any crop cane does well if given good nutrition. Apply fertilizers according to recommendations given if soil samples
were done, but however a blanket application can be applied as follows.
Four 50kg bags mop and two 50kg bags dap as basal and 12 weeks after planting or rationing apply 4 bags of urea per hectare.
Weeding can be done using hoes manually or herbicides.
The crop is ready for harvest between 8 to 12 months.
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