Compost And Green Manure

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

Read the previous part. ← Manure: types, application and storage

Cooking compost

In addition, another type of organic fertilizer - composts - can be prepared and applied annually. This is a good group of fertilizers that require a certain aging in piles or stacks. During the year, they undergo the process of composting, decomposition with the help of microorganisms.

Compost is a fertilizer that results from keeping it in heaps and piles for a certain period of biodegradation. They are always prepared and consist of an inert component (peat, sawdust, leaves, cut grass, weeds) and a biologically active component - manure, feces, bird droppings, kitchen waste, arable soil, which accelerate and start the composting process. Peat for fertilization in its pure form is not used, therefore it is pre-composted with biologically active components.

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Directly pure peat is used only as a mulching material. The composting process begins with layering 25-30 cm of biologically active materials and inert compostable materials, which are available to the gardener. First, a layer of peat or earth with a thickness of 20 cm is laid on the surface of the soil, a 25 cm thick compostable material is laid on it, covered with peat and again the compostable material, bringing the height of the stack to 1.5 m. A layer of peat or earth is poured on top of the heap to preserve nutrients not less than 10 cm.

The stack is regularly moistened, at first it is not compacted so that the temperature can rise to + 70 ° C to disinfect the compost, and then after 2-3 weeks it is compacted to reduce the loss of nutrients. After 2-3 months, the pile is shoveled, improving oxygen access to it, if necessary, moistened to speed up the composting process. The prepared compost is used immediately, it is a homogeneous dark decomposed mass.

Compost can also be prefabricated, prepared from various waste - fallen leaves from trees, weeds, needles, sawdust, kitchen waste, feces, crop residues after harvesting plants. It is advisable to add peat to all these components, mineral fertilizers - phosphate rock, superphosphate 2-3% by weight, which are able to bind gaseous products in the form of ammonia, lime - 2% to reduce acidity and accelerate the decomposition process. Prefabricated phosphate or lime composts are ready for use after 2-3 months of composting.

Green manures

There is another group of organic fertilizers - green or green manure. Green fertilizers are a cultivated green mass of green manure sown for fertilizing purposes, which is plowed into the soil in order to improve the food, water, air and thermal regimes of the soil.

As a green fertilizer, mainly legumes are used, first of all, lupine, vetch, peas, which, due to symbiosis with nodule bacteria, assimilate nitrogen from the air and additionally enrich the soil with it. Plants are usually plowed at the stage of flowering and the formation of the first beans to a depth of 15-18 cm.

In terms of efficiency, green fertilizers are equivalent to manure, and with a high yield of green mass, they even surpass it. They can be grown independently and plowed in the same place, or grown specially on another permanent plot in a mowing, aftermath way, in order to use the mowed mass in a neighboring plot as fertilizer. Most often, perennial legumes, for example, lupine, are grown for this. In order for green fertilizers to give a large and full-fledged fertilizing mass, in the spring, before sowing, 150-200 g / m² of nitrophosphate is applied under them for plowing.

Estimated doses of manure and other organic fertilizers fluctuate depending on the culture, the availability of it at the gardener, on the properties of the soil, the method of application and other factors from 8 to 12 kg / m². Doses of bird droppings will be 10 times less than manure; doses of compost, green fertilizers are equal to doses of manure. The term for applying organic fertilizers is spring, before planting, only green fertilizers are applied as they ripen, usually in the phase of their flowering - in summer. The optimum planting depth of fertilizers when digging the soil is 18 cm.

Organic fertilizers combine well with mineral fertilizers and are applied together, that is, under one crop, but in different doses and at different times. We wish you success in the new season!

Gennady Vasyaev, Associate Professor, ch. specialist of the North-West Regional Scientific Center of the Russian Agricultural Academy

Olga Vasyaeva, amateur gardener