Tartous-Sana
Believing in the necessity of improving the agricultural situation in her small village, the agricultural engineer Sulafa Ibrahim Darwish started from her humble rural house in the village of Bazrael in the Sheikh Badr area in Tartous governorate, to implement her project to produce vermicompost.
Darwish incorporated the experience and knowledge that she gained from her environment, the way of working with the land, and the information and techniques she was provided with during her university studies, which helped her choose the appropriate project for her capabilities and supportive of the nature of her agricultural village, according to her description. Corona epidemic I followed many websites and read many articles and research related to agriculture to enrich my information and benefit from everything new in order to get a good idea to start a project suitable for my capabilities and because I am the daughter of an agricultural environment, so I decided to raise vermi worms to produce vermi compost.
The beginning with the engineer Darwish was by buying only 100 Fermi worms, where she created a suitable environment for her to live and reproduce in a small plastic basin within her house and worked to provide and prepare the appropriate food for her, which consisted of dry tree leaves, small soft branches, wheat stalks, beans and cartons, being rich in carbon and the remains of vegetables and fruits, in addition to Animal waste such as horse and livestock manure, taking into account maintaining the environment humidity, which should range between 60 and 70 percent, and a temperature between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius, with the addition of an amount of ground eggshells that contribute to the production of fertilizer rich in calcium and reduce the acidity that may form in the aquarium and negatively affect in the life of a worm.
After forming the required fertilizer, Darwish conducted her experiments on the pepper plant that she planted in front of her house by adding vermicompost to it and monitoring its growth, indicating that she obtained the desired results as she did not use any type of fertilizer or pesticides, and the soil became fertile and the plant had a stronger structure and more resistance to diseases, in addition to Producing natural fruits in good quantities and free of any pollutants or pathogens that may result from the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, which may be transmitted to the human or animal body.
Darwish indicated that after the multiplication of the worms and the increase in their number, it established a basin with a larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of them, stressing that it will continue to expand this project by establishing more numbers of basins and thus obtaining greater production of vermicompost and reaching the marketing stage in addition to its willingness to provide assistance with what it owns From information and experiences in order to make this idea a success and popularize among farmers in her village or anywhere.
The agricultural engineer, Darwish, noted the usefulness of the project as a natural technology that provides a clean agricultural environment by recycling the waste of organic origin and benefiting from it in reviving the soil, increasing its fertility and its ability to retain water, in addition to strengthening the immunity of plants and increasing the nutritional value provided by the fruits.
Engineer Darwish called on the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform and the concerned authorities in this sector to support and develop this type of project by spreading the culture of worming for the production of organic fertilizer and explaining its usefulness with training courses and seminars for farmers to achieve the maximum possible benefit.
Louay Hossam