By Jay Watson
KUCHING: A teacher at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Kidurong in Bintulu has made his KidSS Chili Fertigation Project farm a success, raising a total of RM25,000 so far for the school’s cooperatives.
Head teacher and project manager Narawi Mohamad, 46, said the project farm under the SMK Kidurong Bhd Cooperative was started two years ago. Now the project has produced a total of 2.5 tonnes of chillies and cili padi.
“The project is being worked on a land of close to one acre in size on the school yard with some students and former students helping out, especially with the harvesting. We also have a few part-time workers,” he said.
Narawi said at present, the project is capable of producing 100kg of chillies a week and they could harvest two or three times depending on the number of ripe chilli plants.
“I expect the project’s next harvest season to reach five tonnes of chillies,” he said.
He said the project had been receiving consultations from the Department of Agriculture and had begun operation in 2018 after planting 660 chilli plants, followed by 2,400 chilli plants in 2019 and increasing to 7,000 chilli plants this year.
“The chilli plants are grown through hanging fertigation as well as bottom fertigation by using polybags, with two chilli plants to a bag,” he said.
The harvest of the KidSS Fertigation Project in the Kidurong SMK field in Bintulu. 
Chillies harvested from the KidSS Fertigation Project at the SMK Kidurong in Bintulu.
