The Specificity Of Various Fertilizers

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

Read the previous part ← General information about fertilizers

Soil and plants need all the nutrients together and in an easily accessible form. It is impossible to allow an excess or deficiency of any battery separately.

Organic fertilizers, as mild and long-acting fertilizers, should be used in conjunction with fast-acting mineral fertilizers. The formula for joint use is as follows: organic plus lime, plus mineral macrofertilizers, plus mineral micronutrients.

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Complex, combined application - this means that all fertilizers should be applied to the soil on the basis of one crop, although the timing of application may be different.

This rule does not allow the use of some kind of fertilizers, for example, only one nitrogen or only phosphorus, since in this case an excess of some and a lack of other nutrients will be observed in the soil, and their effect will most likely be negative.

The formula for the annual use of fertilizers in optimal doses, for example, may be as follows (g / m2): manure - 10000 + dolomite flour - 400 + nitrophoska - 150 + boric acid - 0.2 + copper sulfate - 0.2 + ammonium molybdate - 0, 2.

For fruit and berry crops, another 0.2 g of zinc sulfate must be included in the fertilizer complex, and for vegetable crops, 0.2 g of cobalt sulfate. When sowing or planting plants in rows or nests, it is imperative to add another 7-10 g / m² of granulated superphosphate as a pre-sowing fertilizer. In top dressing, depending on the conditions, you need to add ammonium nitrate 5-7 g / m² + potassium chloride - 5-7 g / m².

Soils vary greatly in composition. There are soils with an excess or insufficient content of mobile nutrients; they cannot be considered fertile. Soils with an excessive amount of hydrogen, mobile iron, aluminum or with a low content of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace elements are infertile. If at least one nutrient is in excess, and the other is not enough, then in both cases the soil is considered infertile. Fertilizers are intended to compensate for this imbalance.

For this, some adjustments may be made to the formula for the use of fertilizers. On very acidic soils, it is necessary to increase the dose of dolomite flour by 25-40%, and on slightly acidic soils, accordingly, reduce them by one third. On soils poor in nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium, increase the doses of the appropriate fertilizers, and on rich soils, accordingly adjust the doses towards their decrease.

Plants also differ from each other in their attitude to various elements in the composition of fertilizers - to sulfur, chlorine, calcium, magnesium, some trace elements, as well as to the content of ions of hydrogen, iron, aluminum and other elements in the soil. Therefore, the composition and doses of fertilizers used may vary, taking into account the nutritional characteristics and fertilization of individual crops.

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Each fertilizer has its own characteristic features, characteristics inherent only to this fertilizer. This is their specificity. Each fertilizer is strictly intended to fulfill a specific purpose, that is, it is prepared either to fertilize a certain soil or crop, or to be applied in some special way of application.

For example, readily soluble fertilizers are produced for their effective use in greenhouses; granulation of fertilizers is carried out so that they remain in the soil for a long time in a water-soluble state and are less fixed, less fixed by the soil; high fineness of grinding lime fertilizers is necessary to accelerate the course of the chemical reaction of neutralization between the soil and the fertilizer; complex fertilizers are prepared in order to save time, money and equipment when spreading them over the field, to exclude manual mixing of simple fertilizers before applying to the fields, and so on.

Therefore, gardeners need to clearly know what each fertilizer is intended for. Therefore, there is no need to buy random fertilizers. There is no universal fertilizer for all occasions, for all plants and soils and all conditions. For each soil and for each plant, there are optimal types of fertilizers and the corresponding conditions for their use. We will give below the specifics of each fertilizer and the corresponding list of mandatory fertilizers that are necessary in horticulture and vegetable growing.

Different types of fertilizers differ from each other both in the content of nutrients, solubility, availability to plants, and the time of their introduction into the soil, the depth of planting, the method of application, and the responsiveness of plants to them. Therefore, organic and mineral fertilizers can be applied taking into account these properties, i.e. at the appropriate time of the spring-summer season, when cultivating the soil before sowing or in rows when sowing seeds, in top dressing during the growth of crops or in another way.

To correctly determine the dose of the applied fertilizer, the packages are labeled with the name of the fertilizer, the concentration of the element and its composition. In addition, approximate conditions of use are sometimes given, but they are too imprecise and cannot be literally used for practical purposes.

Each summer cottage should have the most necessary and sufficiently complete set of fertilizers “at hand”.

All fertilizers used are divided into two groups: organic and mineral. Organic fertilizers - fertilizers containing nutrients mainly in the form of organic compounds, and mineral fertilizers contain nutrients only in mineral form. Organic fertilizers include manure, composts, green fertilizers, bacterial fertilizers and some others. Mineral fertilizers include nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, boric, lime and so on, according to the name of a specific nutrient.

Organic fertilizers are intended not only to saturate the soil with organic matter, but also to improve the structure of the soil, revitalize it. They promote the reproduction of beneficial soil microorganisms, supply plants with carbon dioxide for air carbon dioxide nutrition. Organic fertilizers contribute to the formation and preservation of humus, participate in the creation of a soil-absorbing complex, a very important component of the soil. The content of nutrients in them is not their most important characteristic, since this is not at all their main purpose, because nutrients can easily be given with mineral fertilizers, which is simpler and cheaper.

The choice of organic fertilizers for the gardening plot is small - this is manure or poultry droppings. You need one of them, usually the one that is most available at the moment, which you can order and buy, since the gardener simply has no other choice. To increase the reserves of organic fertilizers, you can prepare peat compost from them in a 1: 1 ratio. At the same time, peat composts from manure or from poultry manure will be even more effective than the original components, if all the conditions for composting are exactly met.

Read the next part. Types and uses of organic fertilizers →

Gennady Vasyaev, Associate Professor, Chief Specialist of the

North -West Regional Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, [email protected]

Olga Vasyaeva, amateur gardener

Photo by E. Valentinova