Adaptation and technology transfer of Self-Watering Pots, in Adama City, as an urban agriculture

Abstract

Meeting food demand in quantity and quality is a big issue, due to the ever-increasing population and environmental change. Indigenous farming (subsistence farming) is not in the position to meet food demands, both in rural and urban areas. Urbanization is expanding food requirements highly increased, so, the introduction of “Urban Agriculture”, in a simple way for the urban population is essential. Urban agriculture supports farm production as additional food sources, at household level increasing nutrition/balanced food/ decreasing malnutrition, creating jobs and increasing income, locally. Adaptation of vegetables is easy, inexpensive, needs small space and also a hobby. In order to minimize gardening spaces, frequency of watering, time and water consumption, the technology of self-watering pots is being introduced. A watering system is through the principle of capillarity and adhesion phenomenon, which is natural. The soil on which the plants are grown sucks water up from the source to the roots of a plant, as required, naturally. As the processes, only about one-tenth of the portion of soil being used is exposed to the water body, through the sieves like fabricated sheet metal, (fig. 1 and 2). The construction watering system designed in such a way that it services different pots at a time. Two categories of planting systems proposed for the experiment; pots and ground. In experimental design, carrot, tomatoes, and pepper were planted in self-watering pots and at the same time, similar vegetables were replicated on the ground, to be treated separately under similar conditions. Qualitatively (using a bar graph and from observation) the advantages of pot application over the ground very obvious. Through standard analysis, using ANOVA variant analysis, the significance is not contrastable (tab. 6 and 7), considering the standard significance level, 0.05, especially on areas and water consumption respectively. It can be anticipated that a long term data collection and analysis required underlining the significance using ANOVA. In general, it can be concluded that watering pots have more advantages than those on the ground in terms of water consumption, time, and space and weeds control.