A city gardening project that covers vegetable farming and small-scale aquaculture was launched by Research and Development Without Borders in June 2021 and after hitting a few milestones, the project team decided to open its doors to community members for crash training.

The objective of the event was to arouse interest among prospective farmers and deliver basic knowledge on small-scale gardening, backyard fish farming and the concept of aquaponics.  19 youth participants took part in the on-farm training seminar 12 of which were female and 7 male.

The training started with the organizers briefing participants on the program of the training followed by a visit to the nursery. Here, the trainer demonstrated how a good nursery should be carried out and explained the time the different plants are supposed to spend in the nursery before transplanting.  The nursing processes for leeks and cauliflower were demonstrated

The vegetable demonstration farm was then visited. Participants explored organically farmed lettuces and cauliflower with lots of excitement. This part of the training was more of a question-and-answer session and questions on phytosanitary treatment, planting method, maturity time and market opportunities were asked.

The first part of the training ended with a visit to a cucumber farm in its early stage. A brief presentation of how it is planted and the challenges of growing cucumber was made. All through the training, emphases were made on drawing nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish pond to water the crops.

The second was a complete tour of the fish farm.

Different types of ponds were then presented to the participants among which are earthen ponds, concrete ponds and plastic fish tanks. The advantages of each of these systems were explained.  Details were equally given on; nursery ponds for the production of larger juveniles, brood ponds for broodstock rearing and fattening ponds, for the production of food fish.