Why Do You Need Green Fertilizers

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Lupine

Green fertilizers were well known in ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and Pharaonic Egypt. Their cultivation and plowing of green mass for vegetable, fruit and berry crops allows now to obtain good plant yields. Each free piece of summer cottage land should be occupied by green manure. They will help to decorate life, improve the culture of agriculture. In addition, green manures help the gardener to fight weeds, diseases and plant pests.

Green fertilizer - fresh plant matter plowed to enrich the soil with organic matter and nitrogen. This technique is referred to as green manuring, and plants grown in fertilizer - green-manures.

Leguminous plants (lupins, seradella, sweet clover, winter vetch, astragalus, rank, sainfoin) are mainly cultivated as siderates. In some cases, non-leguminous crops (mustard, buckwheat, winter rye, oats, barley, spring and winter rape, etc.) or their mixtures are also used for green fertilization. However, nitrogen in the soil accumulates in significant amounts only during the cultivation and plowing of legumes.

Green fertilizer, like any other organic fertilizer, has a multifaceted positive effect on soil properties and crop yields. At the same time, it has some of its specific features. Green fertilizer primarily enriches the soil with organic matter and nitrogen. Depending on the conditions of its use, 3.5-4.5 kg of organic matter containing 15-20 g of nitrogen fixed from the air by nodule bacteria (when sowing green manure legumes) can be applied to 1 m² of arable land. When green fertilizer is applied, other nutrients are also accumulated in the topsoil. They are extracted by the roots of green manure not only from the arable layer, but also from deeper soil horizons. There is a kind of pumping of ash elements from the lower soil layers to the upper ones.

× Gardener's handbook Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

The green mass of green manure contains about the same amount (or even more) of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as in manure. When plowing green fertilizer, losses of nitrogen accumulated in it are completely excluded, while during storage, transportation and incorporation of manure into the soil, it is very difficult to avoid such losses. It decomposes in the soil much faster than other organic fertilizers, and thus better provides plants with nutrients.

Green fertilizer, like other organic fertilizers plowed into the soil, somewhat reduces its acidity, reduces the mobility of aluminum, increases buffering capacity, absorption capacity, moisture capacity, water permeability, and improves soil structure. It improves the vital activity of soil microorganisms, as it is a succulent food and energy-rich mass. When plowed green fertilizer decomposes, the soil and surface air are well enriched with carbonic acid, improving the air nutrition of plants. Due to soil microorganisms, the possibility of nutrient leaching into the lower horizons is sharply reduced.

Green fertilizer is an important means of increasing the fertility of poorly cultivated (especially sandy and sandy loam) soils and slopes. In combination with mineral fertilizers, it helps to reduce the financial costs associated with purchasing more expensive organic fertilizers. Green fertilizer has a strong effect and aftereffect. Lupine, plowed under potatoes, increased the yield of subsequent crops within 4-5 years - by 0.1-0.15 kg per 1 m² (an increase of 20-30%).

Depending on how the green manures are cultivated, in pure form or with other crops, there are independent, intermediate and compacted green manure crops.

With self-sowing, siderates occupy the field for one season or a little less. For example, perennial lupins cultivated for 5-6 years in one place to increase the fertility of sandy soils, cultivate the soil before planting fruit trees and shrubs, to combat soil erosion on the slopes; annual lupines in a pair or winter rye and winter rape, sown in spring (in this case, they bush abundantly and do not bloom) for plowing in August for strawberries.

Often, green manures are in the field for a relatively short period of time - the period after harvesting one crop and before sowing another. They are called intermediate or interim. In these cases, winter crops are well suited, which use the autumn period and part of the spring period for their growth before planting vegetable crops; they well prevent the leaching of nutrients from the soil during the period of heavy precipitation in autumn and spring. In a stubble crop for green fertilization, they can be sown after harvesting early cabbage and early potatoes, lettuce, green onions, they can also be removed from the aisles.

× Notice board Kittens for sale Puppies for sale Horses for sale

Compacted crops of green manure is a method of joint cultivation in a given area of any main crop and green manure. For example, joint cultivation of potatoes and beans, carrots and vetch-oat mixture, placement of green manure in the aisles of another plant - lupine and fruit crops, barley and carrots. These techniques make it possible to obtain a significant amount of green mass of green manure even during the growth and development of the main crop (for fertilizing a neighboring field).

With compacted sowing, green manure and the main crop are sown so as to almost completely eliminate their mutual oppression during growth and not reduce the yield of the main crop. It is possible for these two crops to use nutrients and moisture from different soil layers (different depths of penetration of the root system). Most often, this is a backstage culture, where strips of various widths alternate between green manure and the main crop. The green mass of green manure is used to fertilize the adjacent strip or other area.

An example of a backstage culture is the cultivation of siderates in the aisles of the garden. Siderate backstage culture is also used on slopes (stripes across the slope) to combat soil erosion (perennial lupins, astragalus, alfalfa, clover, etc.). Sometimes the site is sown with siderates all over the place, and then backstage is made. For example, when cultivating sandy soils, the site is completely occupied by perennial lupines for the first few years, and then plowed so that the plowed strips alternate with unplowed ones. Over the next few years, the plowed strips are used for food crops and fertilized with lupine cuttings from the strips left behind.

The ways of using the grown green mass of green manure are also varied. For green fertilizer, either the entire plant mass (both aboveground and roots), or only a certain part of it, is used. On this basis, there are three main forms of green fertilizer: full, cut and aftermath green fertilizer.

A complete green fertilizer is called when all the grown plant mass is plowed.

Green fertilizer is called a mowing green fertilizer if only the aboveground mass of green manure is embedded in the soil, grown in another area and transported from it after it is mowed. An example of a green mowing fertilizer is the cultivation of perennial lupine in a hatching field and applying its mowing mass to neighboring plots.

The mowing and aftermath mass of green manure obtained in the aisles of fruit trees is used to fertilize tree trunks or vegetable crops. The mowing mass of green manure is also used for the preparation of various composts. In addition to the green mass of green manure, such composts can include manure, river or pond silt, straw, weed stems, feces, etc. (all these materials are stacked in layers and composted).