How to Intercrop Yam, Maize, Melon and Cowpea

Backgrounder

Our grandmothers and grandfathers had some very good ideas. They observed their fields and saw that some crops grew well when planted with other kinds of crops. Today we call it intercropping when a farmer plants two or more crops in the same field. Intercropping has many advantages. It reduces weed, pest and disease problems. When a farmer grows more kinds of food, the family diet is healthier. Intercropping is especially valuable for farmers who don’t have much land . It reduces the farmer’s risk, because if one crop fails, other crops may continue to grow.

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Today I’m going to tell you about a way to intercrop yam, maize, melon and cowpea. This method is suggested by Peter Afekoro, a Farm Radio Network member in Nigeria. Yam is the main food crop in this system Melon is important because it controls weeds, but of course you can also eat the melons.

Start by marking out planting rows for yam. Rows should be 1 metre (one and a half arms’ lengths) apart. Place the yam plants one metre apart in the row. Now place a stake at the very centre of four yam planting sites. It might help to imagine an ‘X’. Imagine that the four yam planting sites are at the four corners of the ‘X’. Now place the stake at the very centre of the ‘X’. The stake will be used to stake all four yam plants when they are mature.

The next step is to plant cowpeas in the same row as the yams. Plant a cowpea seed halfway between each yam planting site.

Next, plant the melon. Plant two rows of melon 25 centimetres inside the two rows of yams that will be staked together. Twenty five centimetres is about the length of your foot. So, there are two melon rows between the rows of yams. Each melon should be 1 metre apart within the row. Finally, plant two rows of maize. The maize rows should be 25 centimetres from the yam rows, and each maize plant should be beside a cowpea.

So, if you look at your field, you will see this pattern – one row of maize, then one row of yams and cowpeas together, then two rows of melons, then another row of yams and cowpeas, and finally one more row of maize. I’ll repeat that pattern – one row of maize, a row of yams and cowpeas planted together, two rows of melons, another row of yams and cowpeas, and one more row of maize.The pattern repeats itself beginning with one row of maize so that you will always have two rows of maize together.

All these crops are planted at the same time But the melons grow quickly, and are harvested in three months. During these three months, they grow faster than the weeds. So the weeds can’t grow much – they stay small if they grow at all. This means that after the melons are harvested, the slower-growing yams will have very few weed problems.

This intercropping system has three main advantages. First, a farmer with a small field can still harvest many crops. The second advantage is that, because four yam plants are staked together, farmers use fewer stakes. The third advantage is that the farmer will have food for his family, and perhaps a little income, while waiting for the main crop to mature.