I harvest my PhD fees from one-acre of bulb onions

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What you need to know:

To grow the crop, he first starts by planting the seeds in a nursery where he mixes the soil with DAP fertiliser.
He waters the onions four times in a week using the water he sources from a nearby borehole but gradually reduces the intervals as the crop matures.
After harvesting, he normally dries the onions in the sun to reduce moisture content before he packages them in 10kg packs.
Downy mildew and purple blotch are two major diseases which affect onions but can be prevented by use of sprays such as Ridomin gold.

Twenty-nine-year-old Ian Mutisya is bubbly as he walks on his 1.5-acre onion farm at Miwani on the outskirts of Machakos town.

He uproots two bulb onions from the soil and examines them carefully.