What Soil Will Provide A Reliable Harvest

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

Mother earth

The summer cottage season is coming to an end, the harvesting of the crop grown in this difficult year. This gives gardeners time to evaluate their successes and understand the reasons for failure. Sometimes novice gardeners-gardeners do not even realize that these reasons lie literally under their feet. Soil is the source of human material well-being, the greatest gift of nature. It is a mixture of powdered rock emerging to the earth's surface and decomposed plant and animal remains.

The main task of the gardener is to create optimal conditions for nutrition, water supply, the necessary air regime of the soil, as well as the best reaction of the soil solution for a given culture. The topsoil (15-25 cm) is the most important. It contains the bulk of the roots of all plants. Living organisms (microflora, worms, etc.) live here. Any soil has a number of characteristics, namely: fertility, acidity, texture, ripeness, thermal properties, etc.

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Soil fertility is a combination of its properties that provide high yields of agricultural crops. This includes the ability of the soil to provide plants with a sufficient amount of water, nutrients, to create an optimal temperature regime and a whole range of other conditions necessary for growth, development, flowering and fruit formation. For many crops, the ideal soil is one that warms up early, is easy to cultivate, dries quickly after watering or rain, but at the same time does not compact, does not harden, and retains moisture in the root layer throughout the season. Such soil is quite homogeneous in structure, fine-lumpy (from 1 to 10 mm), granular.

Coarse-grained sandy and fine-grained clayey soils are infertile. In coarse-grained soils, rain or irrigation water disappears instantly, and with it a significant part of the nutrients available to plants leaves. Fine-grained, clayey soils are sticky, practically impermeable to water and air. In such conditions, plants suffer either from flooding (in damp years), or from drying out during a dry period and from a lack of air. Such soils can be improved by adding organic fertilizers or another type of soil. For example, clayey - improved by the inclusion of organic matter (compost, green fertilizers, manure, sawdust, moss, peat, etc.) and medium-grained sand; sandy - by adding clay, peat, compost.

Humus is an important indicator of soil fertility. Humus is a layer of soil that consists of rotted residues of all kinds of organic waste. It increases the soil's ability to absorb and retain water, enhances soil aeration and increases the biological activity of soil microorganisms, especially at soil temperatures from + 10 to + 18 ° C. Soil microorganisms recycle organic residues and soil minerals, making nutrients more available to the grown plants. Humus-rich soils like cucumbers, zucchini, celery, cabbage vegetables. Onions and garlic do not tolerate the high humus content in the soil. In such soil, their root system rots.

Soil ripeness (readiness for processing)

The correct time to start cultivating the soil and preparing the beds can be determined with a simple method. To do this, you need to take a handful of the investigated soil and gently squeeze it with your fingers (as when holding a ball). If the soil crumbles easily under pressure and disintegrates into fragments, this means that it is ready for almost all types of processing. If the soil remains sticky and does not crumble, then you need to wait with processing.

The result of human labor depends on the condition of the soil, and it, in turn, depends to a certain extent on the person who can either improve the soil or severely damage it.

Thermal properties of soil

The most important factor determining seed germination, emergence of seedlings, growth and development of crops is soil temperature. Methods for regulating the thermal regime of the soil for each climatic zone are different. In the northern regions it is most often necessary to increase the soil temperature. However, in hot and dry summers, it becomes necessary to reduce it. Watering or irrigation lowers the temperature as a result of the expenditure of heat for heating and evaporation of water. Loosening enhances soil heating. Covering the soil surface with material of different colors (straw, peat, humus, ash) increases or decreases its heating. Smoke screens reduce heat radiation from the soil and protect plants from frost.

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Soil acidity

An important condition for the normal growth and development of plants is the reaction of the soil solution. It has a great influence on the mineral nutrition of plants, their growth and development, and productivity. Acidity is a soil property due to the content of hydrogen ions in the soil solution, as well as exchangeable hydrogen and aluminum ions in the soil absorbing complex. It is expressed by the conditional pH value: at pH-7 the reaction of the soil solution is neutral, at pH below 7 - acidic, above 7 - alkaline. Acidic soils include podzolic, boggy, gray forest, brown forest, yellow soils, red soils, etc.

High acidity adversely affects the growth and development of many crops and beneficial microorganisms. The availability of many nutrients for plants depends on the value of soil acidity, since with a neutral reaction, nutrients are in a more accessible form. Therefore, most plants develop well with a neutral or slightly acidic reaction of the soil solution. Although there are plants that adapt to an acidic or alkaline environment. It is very important for a gardener to know this indicator on his site.

There are several ways to measure soil acidity

1. The simplest one is to use hints from nature itself.

• On acidic soils grow: field horsetail, sorrel, plantain, creeping buttercup, Veronica oak, sedge, daisy, cornflower, Ivan da Marya, Veronica, mint.
• On slightly acidic and neutral plants grow: fragrant chamomile, coltsfoot, creeping wheatgrass, field bindweed, garden thistle, meadow clover and creeping clover, burdock, alfalfa.
• On alkaline soils: burnet, passerine millet.

2. You can use special acidity testers. These can be litmus tests, capsule testers with chemical reagents, or just a pH tester.

Soil testing:

1. Soil sample. Remove about 50 mm of topsoil and loosen the soil to a depth of about 130 mm. Remove all rocks and organic matter (leaves, twigs, etc.) as this may affect the test result. Gently pour in water (preferably rainwater), bringing the selected area to a state of mud.

2. Tester. Using the thinnest sanding paper, carefully remove any oxides from the top of the silver rod. ATTENTION! Don't damage the dark tip!

3. Testing. Lower the tester rod into damp ground to a depth of about 100 mm. Do not apply pressure under any circumstances! Make sure the damp earth completely covers the tester rod on all sides. After a minute, the tester will show the result.

For a more objective result, you should dig a soil sample, remove all organic matter from it. Prepare the soil by crushing it first. Pour 0.5 L of distilled or deionized water into a clean glass or plastic container and add soil in a 1: 1 ratio. Mix thoroughly and start testing the resulting suspension. The table included with the tester contains a list of plants with the required pH level for them.

It is possible to determine acidity without special equipment, but with the help of an indicator set for the approximate determination of soil acidity. For this, pits 20-25 cm deep are dug along the diagonal of the site at a distance of 10 m from each other. A thin layer of soil is cut off from one of the vertical walls of these pits to their entire depth. Each sample is thoroughly mixed separately, moistened with distilled or rain water. Then, a handful of earth is taken from each sample and squeezed in hand together with a strip of indicator paper. Redness of the indicator tape indicates that the soil is acidic, the tape will turn pink - moderately acidic, yellow - slightly acidic, greenish - close to neutral, blue - alkaline.