सिंहदरबार संवाददाता
Ghorahi. Prateek Lohani of Teraute, Ghorahi Sub-metropolitan City-16, has been cultivating lemons commercially on four bighas of land. He has been living in the US for a long time for studies and employment and has been cultivating lemons commercially in his ancestral land for the past two years.
He had brought and planted golden lemon seedlings from the mountains last year, which will yield fruit in three years. Saying that some of the plants planted last year have started bearing fruit this year, Prateek says, “It is said that golden lemon plants usually bear fruit after three years of planting, but here some plants have borne fruit in just two years.”
Although the plants are small, they have allowed the fruits that have borne this year to remain as a test, and he is confident that the plants will produce commercially from next year.
He says that he brought them from the mountains because golden lemon is considered good for commercial cultivation. Lohani says that he has planted 1,550 seedlings on a lease of about four bighas of land in Teraute.
Lohani, who has been producing the organic fertilizer required for lemon cultivation himself, has employed two people to till and care for the lemon plantation.
He says that he has employed two locals because he cannot take care of the plantation alone and because work is constantly going on on the farm. He, who is thinking of growing lemons, said that he pays Rs 3,000 per plot annually.
Since it is a dry place, he has made arrangements to water each plant through drip irrigation technology. Lohani, who has been cultivating land that has not been used for a long time, says that he is planning to develop the village of Teraute as a ‘green village’.
According to the same idea, commercial vegetable farming, including lemons and tomatoes, is currently underway in Teraute, he says. He says that despite being a civil engineer by profession, he started lemon farming in the village to develop the village as a green village.
Lohani, who returned from America and worked in a hydropower company in Kathmandu for a few years along with teaching, said, “I got involved in lemon farming with the idea of doing some of my own work instead of doing other people’s work.”
He says that he got involved in lemon farming because it is less susceptible to disease infection than other vegetables, and it produces more produce and does not pose a problem in selling the produce.
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