Types And Uses Of Organic Fertilizers

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

Read the previous part ← Specificity of various fertilizers

Compost is often prepared industrially on special sites, and can also be purchased along with manure and poultry droppings.

This will be peat compost from manure or peat compost from bird droppings. They often have a strong ammoniacal odor, which indicates the high quality of the compost, but this is also their disadvantage - a persistent odor causes some inconvenience for the gardener and neighbors. Therefore, such compost does not need to be stored, it is better to immediately add it to the soil, well-filling it into the furrow to a depth of 18 cm, and the smell will disappear. The ammonia will be absorbed by the soil, and the fertilization efficiency will only be higher.

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You can prepare prefabricated composts in your country house using peat and plant waste after harvesting or weeds after weeding.

These are the main and ubiquitous organic fertilizers, readily available to gardeners, who can widely use them to increase soil fertility. Such fertilizers cannot be replaced with any other fashionable fertilizers.

In summer cottage farming, organic fertilizers play a leading role in increasing soil fertility. The positive properties of organic fertilizers are diverse, and they must be used to the fullest for the rise of suburban agriculture. They are a source of carbon dioxide for air nutrition of plants; this is their main advantage over all other fertilizers. They have a mild effect on the soil, do not sharply increase the concentration of the soil solution, as they slowly decompose and slowly release elements of mineral nutrition for plants.

That is why the doses of organic fertilizers fluctuate over a very wide range - from 5 to 20 and more kg / m², and it is difficult to “spoil” or overdose the soil with them. Each ton of dry matter of cattle manure contains approximately 20 kg of nitrogen (N), 8-10 kg of phosphorus (calculated as P ₂ O ₅), 24-28 kg of potassium (K ₂ O), 28 kg of calcium (CaO), 6 kg of magnesium (MgO), 4 kg of sulfur (SO ₃), 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). Poultry droppings are, on average, ten times more concentrated than manure.

Organic fertilizers have a long-term effect and aftereffect on the soil, at an optimal dose of 10-12 kg / m2, for about 4-5 years. If the dose is less, then their effect is less. They are a source of energy for beneficial soil microorganisms, because microorganisms themselves cannot absorb the energy of the sun the way plants do. They can only use the chemical energy of the organic matter of fertilizers for their life.

These microorganisms enrich the soil with humic compounds and fulvic acids, increasing the absorption properties of the soil and thereby creating a rich soil-absorbing soil complex with a higher capacity to keep nutrients from being washed out. They significantly improve the physical properties of the soil, and after applying organic fertilizers, the soil is easier to cultivate, especially by hand.

On low-humus, poorly cultivated sod-podzolic soils, the importance of organic fertilizers increases; they act not only as a source of root and air nutrition for plants, but also as an important means of improving the agrochemical properties of the soil. The absorption capacity and the degree of soil saturation with bases (Ca, Mg, K) increase, its acidity slightly decreases, the soil mobility decreases (toxicity decreases) of aluminum, iron, and manganese, and the soil buffering capacity increases.

Heavy soils become less cohesive, easier to cultivate, their moisture capacity increases, and less nutrients are lost (washed out) from such soils during heavy precipitation. These are all the positive properties of organic fertilizers.

But organic fertilizers, in addition to the noted positive properties, also have disadvantages. First, the ratio of nutrients in them often does not meet the requirements of plants. Organic fertilizers are a waste of animal husbandry, and the animals have already taken the elements necessary for their growth from the feed. Therefore, organic fertilizers are poorer than the original animal feed.

Secondly, the negative property is the slowness of their action, the later release of nutrients for plants, they are always late with the "supply" of plants with food at the right time and in the right quantities. Basically, the maximum release of nutrients from them is observed in the second half of summer, when the need for nutrients in plants decreases, when all growth processes in plants slow down, and they no longer need excess food.

Plants need nutrients in the soil most of all in the first half of summer, when they are at their maximum growth and development. And organic fertilizers cannot provide this. Therefore, the negative properties of organic fertilizers in practical agriculture must be leveled by introducing them together with mineral fertilizers. The positive effect of their complex use with mineral fertilizers increases sharply.

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There is another group of organic fertilizers - green or green manure. Green fertilizers are the green mass of legumes or other green manures grown for fertilizing purposes. Such 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 manure, they even surpass it.

They can be grown independently in one place and plowed, or grown specially on another permanent plot in a mowing, after-going 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 the greatest and more complete fertilizing mass, before sowing under them, it is required to apply 10 kg / m² of manure, 150-200 g / m² of nitrophosphate, 500-800 g / m² of dolomite flour for plowing in the spring. The soil on such a site receives a radical improvement and can only delight the gardener with its new properties.

Green fertilizers can be grown every year after the main crop is harvested, then the second crop in the form of green mass is crushed with a trimmer and buried for digging in the fall. It will be an additional organic fertilizer, but this does not exclude the use of organic fertilizers in the spring.

Estimated doses of manure are from 8 to 12 kg / m². The doses of poultry manure will be 10 times less than that of 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.

Therefore, the general rule for organic fertilizers is to apply them only in spring, store organic matter only until spring and use them in spring for plowing, without leaving them in reserve. Only then will they have the strongest effect on soil and plants. Organic fertilizers are used for all fruit and berry crops and vegetable plants.

There are a lot of mistakes when using organic fertilizers in summer cottages. This is the introduction of only one organic fertilizers without combining them with mineral fertilizers, and the introduction of these fertilizers without taking into account their negative properties; often applied in the fall, while the effectiveness is minimal, since during the autumn and spring periods a lot of nutrients are washed out from fertilizers.

It so happens that sometimes either shallow embedding is allowed, or they are embedded too deep into the soil, which also reduces efficiency. In some cases, surface application of organic fertilizers without embedding is practiced, which is completely unacceptable, since all the positive qualities of these fertilizers are lost. Sometimes gardeners store organic fertilizers in piles for a long time, which leads to large losses of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and fertilizers themselves, and sometimes they scatter them across the field and do not embed them in the soil for a long time.

The loss of nutrients is enormous. Composting regimes are also violated, in this case, fertilizers do not meet the requirements of sanitation, hygiene and environmental safety, especially when preparing peat-faecal composts.

Unlike organic fertilizers, mineral fertilizers are fast-acting fertilizers. The nutrients they contain can be used by plants as soon as they are introduced into the soil. Therefore, with the help of mineral fertilizers, it is easier to meet the changing needs of plants for nutrition during the day and in the phases of growth and development throughout the growing season.

Read the next part. Types and use of mineral 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