How To Create Fertile Soil, Or What To Do With Barren Soil

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

What if the soil on the site is barren?

We are equal to nature

What to do? Of course, to grow, groom, cherish the inhabitants of the soil, and loosen, only loosen the soil so as not to harm them! Instead of a shovel, you will use a Fokine plane cutter. It has a pointed end, so it is with them that you will make grooves first along, then across, deepening it into the soil by about 5 cm. Then, with the flat part of the plane cutter, slightly dig up this layer.

If necessary, then disassemble with a rake. By the way, the rake can also be used to loosen the topsoil. A hand-held cultivator is best suited for such surface tillage, which, in addition to loosening the soil, also has a trimming plate.

You can do this work with a sharpened hoe, "Strizh" weeder and other devices. There are quite a few of them now on sale. The only requirement for such tools is that they must be very well sharpened. And don't believe in self-sharpening. The tool must be sharpened before each use, then the work will go easily. These tools should not be buried deeper than 5 cm in the soil, and they should not stir the seams. You can also dig with an ordinary shovel, but only superficially.

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Do not worry about the roots, they will find their way in deeper layers, penetrating into the microchannels left from the root system of the previous tenants (if you did not destroy them by digging). So the roots don't need deep digging.

Why is humus needed? Humus is the most valuable component of any soil. It is what earthworms and soil microorganisms create. Therefore, a completely reliable indicator of soil fertility is the number of earthworms living in it. The more there are, the more fertile the soil. The more humus, the darker the color of the soil.

One square meter of 25 cm thick soil (topsoil) weighs about 250 kg. If the humus in the soil is about 4%, then these 250 kg contain only 10 kg. During the season, the roots of plants destroy about 200 g of humus from each square meter of the arable layer. To restore it, you will need to annually bring in a bucket (5 kg) of humus per meter of soil surface. If, instead of humus, a green mass of green manure, weeds, grass, leaves or other non-aging organic matter is introduced, then their number should be increased three times.

Sometimes they ask the question: is it better to introduce organic matter - into the upper soil layer or into the lower one? It is economically more expedient to bring it into the lower soil layer. That is, to build up the fertile soil layer from below. At the depth of the bayonet of the shovel, humus is formed 6 times more than in the upper layer with the same amount of organic matter introduced. But digging is permissible only in a layer of 5 cm. What to do?

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If your soil is very poor(gray color indicates that there is only 2% humus in the soil), the first digging should be done as follows. Mark the garden bed. In order not to trample the soil, lay a board across the bed, moving it away from the edge to the width of a shovel bayonet. While standing on the board, remove the soil and stack it near the end of the bed. Loosen the bottom layer with a fork. Fill the dug trench with green weeds or grass clippings and move the board further. Now the soil removed from the next trench, without turning it over, is folded onto the green mass. Loosen the bottom layer in the second trench with a pitchfork, add the green mass into it, move the board even further, and so on until the end of the garden bed. When the last trench is filled with green mass, transfer to it the soil that was removed from the very first trench and piled up near the end of the garden bed. The most important thing in this kind of digging is not to turn the soil. In all subsequent years, you will apply the green mass of weeds or sawdust, leaves and other organic matter to the surface of the garden. Then it will need to be lightly sprinkled with earth or dug up along with the top layer of soil to a depth of no more than 5 cm. This work is best done in late summer or early autumn, so that by spring most of the organic matter has time to rot.

But what if you have solid clay or heavy loam on your site? Moreover, do not dig. Often in books it is recommended to add sand and organic matter to clay soils. But the one who did this knows that the sand goes deeper through the season, and clay comes to the surface again. You will need to apply annually a bucket of sand and a bucket of organic matter for every square meter of soil surface for 12-15 years, until finally the land becomes more or less suitable for a vegetable garden. Scientists' calculations show that to sand just one square meter of clay soils, it will take about 150 kg of sand! And that's only one square meter! Why do you need such hard labor?

If you have very dense soil, build up a fertile layer on top. That is, add compost on the site of the future bed. So that you are not embarrassed by its unpresentable appearance, fence the beds with some slats, poles and sow peas, nasturtium or curly ornamental beans in front of them, or plant beans, sunflowers, corn, cosmea around the perimeter. Leave only the side that you cannot see, the passageway to fill the pile.

So, without humus in agriculture "neither there, nor syuda". It will have to be systematically increased, as nature does, by introducing organic matter. Moreover, every year the plants themselves return to the soil more than they take out of it.

The easiest way to grow humus is through a compost heap. To accelerate the formation of humus, live bacteria should be used, which are contained in the preparations "Renaissance" and "Baikal EM-1". This should be done in the middle of summer.

Why is the earth becoming impoverished? This is a frequently observed phenomenon. The soil stops "working". It "goes on strike", harvests fall on it. And then we start to increase the doses of mineral fertilizers, buy or store manure. But after a while everything "returns to normal." What's the matter?

Nature does not sow green manure, does not apply manure in such quantities as we do, but from year to year it grows huge forests and meadows, and everything is in order. And the fact is that plants increase the organic mass much more than that which they take out, destroying humus, from the soil. That is, they do not deplete, but, on the contrary, increase the fertility of the land. How do they do it, and why do we fail?

Have you seen that nature raked and removed, and even burned fallen leaves and dead plants? What are we doing? Not only do we take out the nutrients stored in the fruits from the soil with the harvest. And we do not return the loot. We still remove fallen leaves and plant residues, interfering with the normal process of humus recovery. Where does it come from if there is no source material? In addition, endless digging destroys the natural structure of the soil. And in such soil there are practically no inhabitants. Note that barren soil is like gray, lifeless dust.

Usually, to improve soil fertility, it is recommended to sow the field with green manure or leave it "for a walk", that is, do not sow anything on it. It, of course, will immediately overgrow with weeds, which, like specially sown green manure, are recommended to be dug up in a year.

Novice gardeners will ask: what are siderates? These are plants on the roots of which bacteria live, which can take nitrogen from the air and accumulate it in the soil. The green aboveground mass, being dug up together with the soil, will add organic matter necessary for the life of microorganisms.

Peas, clover, alfalfa, vetch, lupine can be sown as siderates. It is also recommended to introduce bacterial preparations AMB, azotobacterin, phosphorobacterin, nitragin. That is, we are invited to populate the field with bacteria. The "walking" field is by no means kept under steam, that is, "naked". It is populated by plants, and, oddly enough, the tired, depleted soil does not get tired further, but is perfectly restored.

Why does it get tired and depleted in our country, but not in nature? Because she does not dig and does not take anything from her fields. Everything returns back to the ground, and with high percentages. So let's follow nature, take less, give more. How to do it?

Do not take away weeds from the beds, from under bushes and trees, but leave them lying in the aisles and under the plantings. Do not worry, they will disappear in a couple of weeks, because the worms will take them along their paths into the ground. And before that, for some time they will serve as a mulching material, that is, they will cover open places in the soil and will not allow moisture to evaporate from the surface, and the soil structure to collapse. Do not remove roots and aerial parts of plants after harvest. Leave everything in the beds.

If you are afraid of pathogens on these plant residues, then treat the beds directly on them with the preparation "Fitosporin". The living bacterium-predator, which is in this preparation, will "eat" the causative agents of any fungal and bacterial diseases during the fall. It, unlike the bacteria mentioned above, dies not at one degree of frost, but at minus 20 degrees. If the winter turns out to be warm, then it will overwinter safely in the soil and will continue to serve as a nurse in your beds. And if the winter still falls out harsh, then there is usually a lot of snow, and under this fur coat she has a great chance to survive.

Of course, pests hibernating under plant debris cannot be destroyed in this way, but you can also find justice on them if you take good care of your pets.

So, the reason for the impoverishment of the soil lies in the unwise land use. If all the time from the soil only to take out nutrients along with the harvest, then nothing will remain in it. We must return it sometime

G. Kizima, gardener