Horticulture and Vegetable Production: Nursery, Spacing and Post-harvest
Horticulture and Vegetable Production covers nursery raising, transplanting, spacing, pruning, protected cultivation, maturity indices and post-harvest handling. The exam tests whether you can plan a block and harvest at the right stage.
Core rules
- Raise healthy nursery seedlings in a raised bed or tray, use treated seed, and harden seedlings before transplanting. Transplant in the cool part of the day and water immediately.
- Spacing controls plant population and airflow. Convert centimetres to metres before calculating area per plant. Drip irrigation with fertigation and mulching saves water and reduces weeds.
- Pruning and training improve light penetration and fruit quality. Harvest at the correct maturity index: colour, firmness, size or days after transplanting, depending on the crop.
- Grade, cool and pack produce promptly. Rough handling at harvest causes more loss than a small delay in marketing.
Worked example
Tomato is planted at 60 cm × 45 cm. Area per plant = 0.60 × 0.45 = 0.27 m2. Plants per hectare = 10,000 ÷ 0.27 = 37,037. For 0.5 ha, plants = 18,518. Add 5% for gap filling: 18,518 × 1.05 = 19,444 seedlings. The key step is converting both spacings to metres before multiplying; using 60 × 45 directly gives a meaningless number.
Traps that cost marks
Do not use 100 m2 for a hectare; it is 10,000 m2. Do not transplant deep or with dry roots, skip hardening, mix varieties in one block, or harvest tomatoes by size alone when colour and firmness are the maturity indices. Do not leave harvested produce in the sun or overload a crate.