How To Make Work Easier In The Country: Using APIs And Hydrogels

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

Techniques to reduce the cost of manual labor and the number of crop treatments

Switching from conventional mineral fertilizers to APIONs (long-acting fertilizers)

It must be admitted that a considerable part of the time we spend in the summer in the garden is spent on numerous and literally maddening feeding. No matter how you look at it, once a week (well, once every 10 days) you have to feed modern and very nutritionally demanding hybrids of tomatoes and eggplants, peppers and cucumbers. Once every two weeks, you need to feed pumpkins, zucchini and cabbage.

Okay, it's easier with carrots, beets and potatoes - they basically prepare fertile soil for them initially and feed them a couple of times a season. There is, of course, also onions and garlic, well, there is already its own technology. But this does not end there either - fertilizing is needed for berry and ornamental shrubs, and fruit trees, and flowers. For example, tall apple trees also have to be fed every 10 days since June. And then there are raspberries and strawberries. And foliar feeding has to be carried out regularly.

However, there is a way out, one has only to switch from ordinary mineral fertilizers to APIONs (fertilizers with long-term effect). This will get rid of grueling feeding, and throughout the season you will only need to water the plants.

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APIONs are a new form of long-term controlled fertilization. APION Base is a fully soluble complex of plant nutrients encased in a special perforated membrane. It includes: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, trace elements and natural humates that improve the absorption of nutrients. The content of water-soluble nutrients in APION is 96.5-99.5%, i.e. this is a very highly concentrated fertilizer, in contrast to the conventional mineral fertilizers that we widely use, the proportion of active substances in which can be 16% (as in nitrophos) and even less.

These fertilizers are especially effective on vegetable crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, pumpkins, zucchini, potatoes and cabbage, as well as on berry and ornamental shrubs and fruit trees. APIONs are placed in the root zone of plants - depending on the type of plants, this is done once for the entire season or even for a longer time.

Benefits of using APIONs:

1. Provides a continuous supply of nutrients to the plants for the entire growing cycle (from 2 months to 2 years). For vegetable crops, APIONs are used with a working time of 3-5-7 months, for shrubs, trees - APIONs with an operating time of 10-12-18 or more months.
2. Apions are very easy to use and can significantly save time and effort in caring for plants.
3. The consumption of fertilizers is reduced by 3-8 or more times (which means that there is no need to buy and carry tens of kilograms of fertilizers), which are largely simply washed out, for example, in our Ural soil - when using APIONs, leaching is completely excluded.
4. The introduction of other fertilizers is excluded (money and time for their purchase are saved).
5. The problems of fertilizer overdose disappear, which means that root burns and stress from the fact that you did not guess with the dosage of fertilizers are completely excluded.
6. There are no problems with the identification of nutrients that are lacking in plants, and their introduction, which is quite difficult for many gardeners.
7. The yield of plants increases by an average of 20-60%.

But most importantly, the use of these fertilizers allows you to get rid of exhausting fertilizing.

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Watering the beds according to the reduced program using hydrogels

For normal growth and development of plants, they need a constant source of available water - they die when waterlogged, and poorly develop with insufficient watering. As a result, in early spring with continuous strong winds, gardeners have to practically not leave the beds with a watering can, and in summer a similar situation happens due to the lack of rain. Watering the entire garden regularly by hand, even with a well-established irrigation system (in the form of hoses conveniently placed everywhere and water supplied by a pump) is a very laborious task and requires a lot of time and effort. Moreover, many crops can be watered only at the root, otherwise diseases may appear. And if the irrigation system is not adjusted, then watering turns into a real nightmare.

At the same time, there is a very effective system for reducing irrigation - this is the use of special hydrogels (they have been on sale for a long time, only few gardeners know about them). When using hydrogels, it is necessary to water much less often: on light soils, watering can be reduced by at least 6-7 times, on heavy soils - by 3 times. For example, if before applying the hydrogel you were forced to water the plants on average once a week, then after applying it, it will be enough to water once a month and a half. Agree that the reduction in labor costs is obvious.

Hydrogels are polymers that can absorb large amounts of water and minerals. They are non-toxic and decompose in the soil in about 5 years. In dry form, aqueous polymers are crystals, and when soaked, they begin to resemble jelly in appearance. The amount of water and nutrients absorbed by them (water-soluble fertilizers) is 200-400 times (depending on the type of hydrogel) the volume of the dry polymer.

Hydrogels are introduced into the soil once every 5 years and are especially effective in greenhouses, lawns, alpine slides, as well as when growing seedlings, indoor and balcony flowers. Once in the soil with the hydrogel, water remains there and can be received by plants through the root system as needed, remaining in the root zone all the time. In other words, water does not evaporate and does not go into the lower layers of the soil, but is stored in it and used by the plant as needed. Saving water reaches 50% -60%, and the intervals between watering increase by about 5-6 times. In addition to all this, the use of a hydrogel increases the yield and quality of the products obtained, which is also not bad.

Also read:

How to facilitate labor in the country: loosening the soil instead of digging

How to facilitate labor in the country: thinning plantings, using a covering material, mulching the soil