Mulching Crops And Plantings Increases The Yield

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

Mulching is a well-known agricultural technique that has a long history of use in agriculture.

Now many gardeners use it in their summer cottages. Leaves, peat, sawdust, and other plant materials are used as material for mulching.

Black polymer films are increasingly used here, primarily those that do not transmit light. With their help, the growth of weeds is suppressed, the formation of a soil crust is prevented (the soil under the film does not need to be loosened!). They protect the root system from frost and frost during a snowless winter, improve the thermal regime and biological activity of the soil.

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Among gardeners, mulching with a black film of garden strawberries is widely used. Under the film, it gives an increase in yield by an average of 20-30% due to better development of the root system, its greater branching, as well as an increase in the volume of the ground part of the plant. Already in the first mulching experiment, conducted in 1954 in the United States, it was found that strawberries are affected by gray rot less than 75-85%.

Garden strawberries are also mulched with organic materials (for example, straw), but they inhibit the growth of weeds worse, they rot, and in a rainy summer the berries are wet and more susceptible to diseases. The berries on the mulch film are clean and easy to pick. The absence of gray rot makes it possible to do without chemical means of protection. Irrigation water consumption is reduced by 1.5-2 times, which is especially important in dry summers.

Frosts and snowless winters are especially dangerous for garden strawberries, because its root system is at a shallow depth. And here mulching helps out. Beds covered with a film freeze less, because film mulch is a moisture-proof material that traps moisture vapors coming from deeper, warmer soil layers. At subzero temperatures, moisture condenses on the inner surface of the film, forming a layer of friable frost, which is a kind of "artificial snowdrift" layer. Heat protection increases by 5-10% compared to open soil.

Black film mulching of near-trunk strips in plantations of apple, cherry, plum and other fruit trees is widely used in Japan, Australia, England, France and many other countries. Due to this, tree roots stay in warm, moist, rich in microflora and loose soil. This stimulates the accelerated development of young plants, increased branching and early fruiting. Depending on the type of soil in which the plant is planted, the film can be laid in such a way that it catches and retains almost all precipitation (make a gentle slope towards the tree trunk).

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After mulching the soil, it is much easier to care for such labor-intensive crops like gooseberries. In the regions of Western Siberia, using this technique, it was possible to achieve almost complete suppression of weeds and an increase in yield from 6 to 25%! Everyone's favorite fruit bushes - black and red currants - are mulched in the same way.

Black film is successfully used for propagation of black, red currants and ornamental shrubs with lignified cuttings. The cuttings are planted by piercing the film, as a result of which an increased temperature and soil moisture is created in the rooting zone, while the upper part of the cuttings is at a lower temperature. At the same time, the process of root formation proceeds in parallel with bud opening. In the open ground, the formation of roots lags behind bud opening, so a significant part of the cuttings dries up. When mulching, the survival rate of cuttings increases by 40%.

In addition, soil mulching is widely used in the cultivation of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers and other root crops, both in open and protected ground.

Potato mulching is widely used in the world. It is grown on ridges and ridges. When planting, tubers are not embedded in the soil, but laid out on the surface. New tubers are also formed on the surface, and to collect them, you just need to remove the film. Potatoes under the film are grown without hilling, since the tubers that appear on the soil surface are protected from the action of light. The film prevents weeds from germinating and retains moisture. This is especially important when there is a lack of organic matter. The ground part of the plants grows outward through the holes made in the black film during planting (for the first time this method was applied at the Menkovskaya experimental station of the Agrophysical Institute, Leningrad). Now this method of growing potatoes is used in Italy, the USA and England.