Are you interested in starting a watermelon farm successfully? Do you need a sample watermelon farming business plan template? If YES, then i advice you read on. Watermelon is among the best fruits recommended for people that wish to loose weight; and with the high rate of overweight or obesity related issues, and other numerous health benefits watermelon offers to the body, the demand for watermelon has sky rocked over the years.
Starting a watermelon farming business can yield massive profits as you can cultivate and harvest three batches of watermelon fruits in a year. For this article, I will discuss why you should invest in watermelon farming, and how you can start your own watermelon farm in no time.
4 Reasons Why You Should Invest In Watermelon Farming Business
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High Turnover
It takes a watermelon eighty five days to get to maturity from the planting date. This means you can have three sets of harvested watermelon fruits to sale within the year and if you started out the business on a large parcel of land, then you are sure to get huge returns on your investment.
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There is a Ready Market for Your Produce
Watermelon also contains some enzymes that help to fight against cancer causing cells in the body; you see why there will always be a high demand for watermelon.
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Watermelon Is Pest Resistant
This means that watermelon plant is resistant to pests and diseases that usually affect plants; you will not need to spend much on greeting ride of pests from affecting the watermelon.
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Very Easy to Start
As long as you have the land space needed for the farming, you don’t need much of other things to get your watermelon business up and running; you don’t need much technical knowledge to run a watermelon farm.
3 Things You Need to Start a Watermelon Farming Business
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Large Expanse of Land
Each watermelon plant is called a vine; and the vines get to spread out as they mature and they need space for the plant to bear bigger fruits. I will talk more on the space needed for a watermelon plant to grow well.
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Sunlight
A watermelon plant requires of sunlight to grow well. So the land space must be in a location where there is adequate sunlight to nurture the plants.
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Good Seedling
The type of seedling you use will affect the output or quality of watermelon fruits your plants will yield. There are very various varieties of watermelon species, you have to make a choice of which variety you wish and carry out further research on how to handle the cultivation process before you embarked on it.
Starting a Watermelon Farm – Sample Business Plan Template
1. Get Your Land Space
I mentioned earlier that you need a large expanse of land to successfully run your watermelon farm. The first step to take is to find the land you will need for the cultivation in a location where the watermelon plants can get six to eight hours of sunlight each day.
2. Source for Seedling
The next step to take is to source for healthy watermelon seedling. Farmers that already run their own watermelon farmers can supply you with healthy seedling to use on your own farm.
3. Begin the Cultivation Process
The cultivation process in watermelon farming is quite complicated as you need to plant the seedlings in a specific way to give them better space to germinate. When planting the watermelon seed, each hole for the watermelon seedling needs to be 1 foot deep and over 1.5 feet wide. Cover the hole with fertilizer, place the seed on the top and push with your finger till it gets to at least 0.5 foot deep.
For the spacing, you should allow a space of 8 feet between each plant to allow the vines enough space to spread out when the plant begins to grow. If possible, do the planting when the whether is hot, up to at least 70 degrees hot, because watermelon functions better in hot weather.
4. Watering
For the first few weeks after planting, you need to water the watermelon generously twice in a week, then reduce the watering to just once every two weeks as soon as the vines start sprouting out. This is to help increase the sugar content in the watermelon fruit. If a watermelon has a watery taste, that was because the farmer continued to water it consistently even after the vines started growing and didn’t give it the needed space to absolve sugar from the soil.
5. Weed Control
Since the watermelon plant is pest resistant, you need to focus more on getting ride of weeds on the farm; this can be done with herbicides.
6. Harvesting
This is the part everybody is waiting because harvesting means that the sales and money making period is around the corner. I mentioned somewhere above that it takes a watermelon plant 85 days to get to maturity.
The question is; how do you know that you watermelon is ready for harvest? Your watermelon is ready for harvest when the fruit looses it outer shiny appearance and also the when the part of the fruit that touches the ground changes into a rich yellow colour.
7. Sales
After harvesting, the final step is transportation from the farm to the wholesaler, retailer or final consumption for sale. To successfully sell your watermelon produce, you have to know who your market is. The main market for your produce include: owner of fruit stores, Grocery Store owners, restaurants and hotels, pharmaceutical companies that need watermelon extracts as raw material for the production of supplements.
At this stage of the article, I have covered various sub topics relating to watermelon farming including; reasons to start watermelon farming business, things you need to start the business and how to start the business. Finally, Watermelon is a fresh produce and you don’t expect it to stay fresh for a long time after it is harvested that is why you need to carry out a feasibility research in your location even before you start the farm to ensure that there is a ready market and high demand for your produce.