Since ancient times, people who cultivated the land and cultivated various plants on it, tried to increase the yield and its quality. Living on the banks of such large rivers as the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, ancient agricultural civilizations used bottom mud sediments to improve and enrich the composition of the soil. It was in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia that sapropel was first used as a fertilizer. It was introduced and plowed into the soil after the crop was harvested.
Modern gardeners and gardeners are also preoccupied with the question of how to "feed" the land, so that there are a lot of vegetables and fruits, and that they do not contain any harmful nitrates, nitrites and other consequences of applying the achievements of modern chemical science. As they say, all new is well forgotten old. Perhaps what helped the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia to get rich harvests will also serve us? In this article we will try to figure out if sapropel is what it is, how, when, and why it needs to be applied.
What it is?
Sapropel is a natural product formed naturally at the bottom of fresh water. The remains of plants and animals falling down to the bottom surface are decomposed due to the action of microorganisms living in an environment with a low oxygen content. As a result of physical-mechanical, biochemical and microbiological processes, a stable suspension forms over time, which, in addition to organic components, includes various inorganic components and mineral impurities.
Where and how is it mined?
There are many reserves of sapropel in Russia, primarily in the Central and Far Eastern districts. In addition, many different lakes located in the North-West, Ural, Siberian economic regions also store its reserves.
For the extraction of this natural raw material, both special equipment and dredgers are used to lift it to the surface. Then they deliver it to the shore, dehydrate and process it, receiving sapropel (fertilizer) or other products.
Types of Sapropel
It is customary to subdivide this natural raw material into four large groups:
- granulated;
- loose;
- pasty;
- liquid.
Sapropel as a fertilizer is most often used in granular and granular form. In bulk, it is used when growing on an industrial scale a variety of crops, landscaping settlements and the formation of various landscapes. The largest fraction of loose sapropel is used to restore land on which there were landfills, places for drilling and mining operations, ore dumps.
Granular fertilizer applied to the soil has a longer effect on plants and is used to grow vegetable, cereal, flowering plants and root crops.
Pasty and liquid sapropel is used for remediation work on large areas, introduced before planting crops.
What is included in the composition?
Sapropels can have a very different origin, but it is it that determines the acidity, degree of mineralization and the quantitative content of nutrients and organic substances.
Sapropel consists of two parts - mineral and organic. Obtained in different places, it has a different ratio of these parts and chemical composition. Depending on the content of organic substances, sapropel as a fertilizer can be:
- mineralized;
- mineral-organic;
- organic mineral;
- organic.
In the organic composition of sapropel, scientists found not only humic and biologically active substances, amino acids, biostimulants of growth, but also various vitamins. In the mineral part there are micro and macro elements.
Does it work or not?
On many forums dedicated to gardening and gardening, you can find reviews about sapropel, to put it mildly, not the most positive. However, there are such that after reading them, there is a desire to find a store and buy this miracle fertilizer. What's the matter, why is there such a difference? After reading and analyzing the information, we can conclude that the negative feedback from gardeners is mainly related to the purchase of fakes, imitations of “under sapropel”.
It is unlikely that something will grow on the bed, in which heavy lumps of some substance similar to plasticine, with a musty smell of swamp and a bluish-brown color interspersed with red clay, are laid. In the event that when buying you were convinced that this is exactly what sapropel looks like as fertilizer - you were deceived. In the best case, it is silt from the bottom of an unknown reservoir with an incomprehensible composition, and not a useful natural fertilizer.
In fact, sapropel looks like a grayish-gray powder that looks like ash, with only larger particles. Today, sapropel is also available in compressed form (tablets or briquettes). Positive and enthusiastic reviews are connected precisely with such fertilizer extracted and processed in an industrial way.
How to apply fertilizer?
Improving the mechanical structure of the soil, increasing its moisture capacity and aeration - all this is about sapropel. Method of application in crop production depends on the type of soil, although to improve the physico-chemical characteristics, it can be introduced under any digging in the autumn.
So, lime sapropel can be used instead of dolomite flour to lower the level of acidity of the soil. Calcium in this fertilizer neutralizes acid and enriches the soil with organic and mineral substances.
In addition, sapropel can be composted with manure or slurry, or mixed with various mineral and organic waste. The introduction of sapropel fertilizers helps to cleanse the soil from various pathogens and plants.
This fertilizer can improve the soil composition for seedlings by mixing in a proportion of 1:10 with ordinary soil. If you add sapropel to the hole before planting seedlings or seedlings, then they will more easily take root and grow faster.
During field and laboratory studies, it was found that the yield of most crops after adding sapropel to the soil increases several times.