How To Use Organic Fertilizers Correctly. Part 2

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

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To always be with the harvest

In practice, there are many examples of unsuccessful use of organic fertilizers: application of small doses - less than 4 kg / m²; long-term storage in stacks - more than 1 month; prolonged lying in small piles before application - more than 1-2 hours, when they lose moisture and ammonia; application in the fall, when they are not needed for the soil, and the plants simply do not grow. Optimal storage is storage from the moment of purchase to digging the soil in the spring for no more than one month. At this time, before application, the manure is stacked with a 20 cm bedding and a shelter made of peat or sawdust. All purchased fertilizers must be consumed in full in the spring - 95% for digging and 80-100 kg for composting.

In the range of fertilizers, manure, as a waste of animal husbandry, consisting mainly of animal excrement, with or without bedding, is the main and ubiquitous organic fertilizer. Distinguish between ordinary litter manure (this is the best) and semi-liquid (or liquid) litterless manure (worse - high humidity). Litter manure consists of solid and liquid animal excreta and litter. It contains on average about 25% dry matter and about 75% water. Litter-free semi-liquid manure consists mainly of solid and liquid animal excreta. It contains only 10-11% dry matter and 89-90% water.

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With manure, all nutrients (macro- and micro-) elements necessary for plants enter the soil. So, each ton of dry matter of cattle manure contains about 20 kg of nitrogen (N), 8-10 kg of phosphorus (calculated as P2O5), 24-28 kg of potassium (K20), 28 kg of calcium (CaO), 6 kg of magnesium (MgO), 4 kg of sulfur (S03), 20-40 g of boron (B), 200-400 g of manganese (MnO), 20-30 g of copper (Cu), 125-200 g of zinc (Zn), 2-3 g of cobalt (Co) and 2-2.5 g of molybdenum (Mo). Therefore, such fertilizers are called complete, i.e. they contain all the nutrients plants need.

However, these elements are contained in manure in the wrong ratio and not in the quantities required by the plants, since a number of nutrients were taken from the feed by animals for their growth and development. To correct these shortcomings, it is imperative to apply manure together with mineral fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, lime and micronutrient fertilizers). Only then will the plants be fully fed.

Horse and sheep manure is richer in nutrients (less water) than cattle or pig manure. However, the richness of the manure depends more on the composition of the litter. Peat and straw manure is more nutritious than sawdust or litterless manure. Litter improves the physical and chemical properties of manure (less moisture, looser, easier to decompose, etc.), it retains nutrients more and prevents losses.

In the first year, when applying manure, cucumbers, cabbage, onions are grown, in the second year - carrots and beets, and all other crops are grown in the third year.

Manure application technology: first lime is scattered, then nitrogen, phosphorus, potash fertilizers and microfertilizers, then manure is scattered and immediately sealed by digging with a 15-18 cm turnover into the moist soil layer.

If manure is forcedly stored, then with the participation of microorganisms, the processes of decomposition of organic matter to carbon dioxide and ammonia are rapidly going on, mineral compounds of phosphorus and potassium are formed. After two months, only 0.5 tons of one ton of manure remains, and after six months - only 100-200 kg. The rest is wasted uselessly.

Manure is a ready-to-use fertilizer. Only manure introduced in spring significantly increases the physicochemical properties of the soil and its fertility. If you didn't manage to add manure in the spring, then you should immediately use it for composting. A special need for storing manure can arise only when it is necessary to obtain semi-rotten manure or humus for growing seedlings and plants in protected ground.

Poultry manure is a valuable, concentrated and fast-acting organic fertilizer. It contains about ten times more nutrients than manure. Therefore, its dose is 10 times less than that of manure. Application conditions are the same as for manure. That is, it must be brought in for digging in the spring. Storage is not recommended.

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Peat is not used directly as fertilizer. It is better to use it for mulching the soil, for the preparation of biological composts: peat-manure (in a ratio of 1: 1), peat-fecal (in a ratio of 2: 1), peat-lime (1-3% lime), peat-phosphorite (1 -3% phosphate rock or superphosphate), peat-mineral (2% each phosphate rock or superphosphate, ammonium nitrate or urea, dolomite flour). Such composts will be ready in 1-1.5 months, and they are brought in in the spring when digging the soil for potatoes, vegetables and fruit and berry crops.

Biological composting is keeping in heaps or piles of mixtures of inert (straw, sawdust, leaves of trees, green plants, peat as absorbents of moisture and ammonia) and biologically active components rich in microflora and nutrients (manure, feces, kitchen waste, soil, etc. etc.).

You can prepare compost in winter and spring in a focal way, and in summer in layers. In winter, 1m³ of fresh, warm manure is placed in a peat pile. If the manure and peat are cold, then they are heated with fires. In the spring, they take leaves, sawdust or peat harvested at the site and warm imported manure or feces are placed in them in foci. In summer, the components are laid in layers: peat + feces + crop waste or plus mineral fertilizers. For better decomposition, the mixture must be kept moist by sprinkling with water or kitchen waste. In order for oxygen to enter the compost well, the compost heap is kept in a loose state, and if necessary, it is shoveled from one place to another. The maturation of compost in the warm season takes 1-2 months. The compost is considered ready,if the original components are indistinguishable from each other and have a dark color. Compost is used in the same way as manure.

Green fertilizer is fresh plant matter plowed into the soil to enrich it with organic matter and nitrogen. Very often this technique is called sideration, and plants grown for fertilization are called siderates. Green manure was already permitted in the Roman Empire and in Pharaonic Egypt. Leguminous plants (lupins, seradella, sweet clover, winter vetch, astragalus, rank, sainfoin) were mainly cultivated as siderates.

In some cases, non-leguminous crops (mustard, buckwheat, winter rye, winter rape) or mixtures of legumes with cereals (winter rye + winter vetch, oats + peas, etc.) are also used for green fertilization. However, nitrogen in the soil accumulates in a significant amount only during the cultivation and plowing of leguminous plants, 3-5 kg of organic matter containing 15-20 g of nitrogen fixed from the air by nodule bacteria are plowed per 1m². In addition, plants extract all mineral elements 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. The green mass of green manure contains approximately the same amount (or even more) nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as in good manure.

The lack of green fertilizer, like manure, associated with a low content of phosphorus and potassium, can be eliminated by applying phosphorus and potassium fertilizers directly under the green manure or when plowing them. Green manure in soil decomposes much faster than other organic fertilizers rich in fiber.

With self-sowing, siderates occupy the field for one season or a little less (for example, annual lupins in a pair or winter rye and winter rape, sown in spring, which give a plentiful mass before planting strawberries in August or in spring before sowing vegetable crops of the second sowing period); two seasons or even several years in a row (cultivation of perennial lupine in one place for 2-4 years or more in a row to increase the fertility of sandy soils; cultivating the soil before planting fruit trees and shrubs; combating soil erosion on slopes, etc.).

Often, green manures are in the field for a relatively short period of time - in the period after the harvest of one crop before the sowing of another. Such crops of green manure are called interim or intermediate. In these cases, winter crops are well suited, which use the autumn period and part of the spring period before planting vegetables for their growth, they well prevent the leaching of nutrients from the soil during the period of heavy precipitation.

In the case of a coulisse crop, strips of different widths alternate on the plot, occupied and not occupied by green manure, the green mass of which is used for fertilization on the adjacent strip. An example of a backstage culture is the cultivation of green manure in the aisles of a young 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. The plowed strips for a number of subsequent years are assigned to food crops and fertilized with lupine cuttings from the left strips.

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 the application of its mowing mass to neighboring plots (for example, the first mowing for summer green crops, the second for strawberries). The mowing mass of green manure obtained in the aisles of fruit trees is used to fertilize near-trunk circles or vegetable crops. The mowing mass of green manure is also used for the preparation of various composts.

Thus, organic fertilizers, especially when applied together with mineral fertilizers, allow obtaining high yields of good quality, increasing soil fertility and reducing the cost of manual labor for the processing of loose structural soil.

Wish you luck!