The ability of the soil to saturate plants in the process of their growth and fruiting with useful substances, water and air is called fertility. The crop productivity directly depends on its value.
Scientists have long been looking for a universal way to maintain field fertility. The article examined several options with which you can maintain the nutritional value of the soil at the proper level.
Standard methods
Proven agrotechnical measures by which the conservation of soil fertility is carried out are:
- Regular introduction of organics. Such fertilizers are universal. They improve the structure of heavy soils and bind light sandy loam.
- Proper cultivation of fields, the rejection of heavy equipment and cultivators that turn the top layer of earth into dust. Fertility is simply “blown away” from the fields.
- Regulation of the acid-base balance of the earth by liming or acidification.
- Crop rotation is a reliable and proven way to maintain field fertility. The main essence of the technique is the correct alternation of crops to maintain the balance of nutrients in the soil and minimize the accumulation of pathogens.
- Black steam is an expensive but good way to maintain field fertility. For 1 season, nothing is sown on the ground, giving it a break, gather strength before a new crop.
- The use of green fertilizers - green manure.
Environmental hazard
Recently, it has been increasingly said that the optimal way to maintain field fertility should be ecological and completely natural. Black steam, green manure , crop rotation and the application of organic fertilizers will not do any harm.
Chemistry - mineral fertilizers, land reclamation - is not able to ensure the safety of the biosystem. Accumulating in the soil, penetrating into the groundwater and washing off into the surface water bodies, the chemicals reach a concentration dangerous for the living organism. The consequences of this process can be not only environmental poisoning, but also the death of individual species.
Innovation
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Biotechnologist Igonin A.M. He proposed a revolutionary way to maintain field fertility - the use of earthworms to obtain biohumus - a highly effective organic fertilizer.
The method is very cheap and easy to implement. It is only necessary to fertilize the fields with organics inhabited by earthworms. A special California red worm is best suited for this purpose.
When working, earthworms turn organic fertilizer into humate, which has a number of properties useful to plants. Thanks to it, the yield increases, the ripening time is reduced and more uniform, the product quality improves . Humates are also able to neutralize toxins in the soil.
The use of earthworms as a way to maintain field fertility is an innovation and has not yet been widely implemented in Russian farms.