Effectiveness of the Use of Manure, Biocompost and Siderates for Vegetable Crops

Abstract

Excessive fascination in vegetable growing with mineral (especially nitrogen) fertilizers has led to significant contamination of soils and products with nitrate, heavy metals, and other toxicants. The scientific literature has accumulated considerable material on the use of various kinds of fertilizers, especially mineral fertilizers. A well-established trend towards the development of organic farming on a global scale requires a more indepth study of the effect of organic fertilizers on vegetable yields and adjustments to previously developed fertilizer systems for vegetable crops. The research was carried out by the Department of Agriculture and Agrochemistry of the All-Russian scientific research institute of vegetable growing-branch of the Federal scientific center of vegetable growing and three experimental stations of the Institute on sod-podzolic, alluvial meadow soils, typical, ordinary and leached chernozems in the Non-chernozem zone, the North Caucasus and Western Siberia. It was found out that the efficiency of the use of cattle manure on average for 6 crops on 6 types of soils was 33% of the increase in yield. The highest increases were found in cucumber (62%) and table beet (54%) crops; cabbage and carrots increased yields by 27 and 22%, respectively, tomato and onion - by an average of 17%. The efficiency of manure was inversely proportional to the amount of humus content in the soil. Studies of the effectiveness of the use of biocomposts based on chicken manure revealed that the biocompost increased the yield of 12 vegetable crops on alluvial meadow soil by an average of 20, mineral fertilizers - by 28%, the joint application of these fertilizers allowed to increase yields by 35%. Green fertilizers (siderates) in the conditions of the Central Processing Plant allowed to increase the yield of vegetables by 8-15%, peas, pea mixture and phacelia turned out to be the most effective, yellow lupin and sunflower were ineffective. In the irrigated conditions of the Rostov region, the complex application of mineral fertilizers, manure and siders increased the yield of vegetable crops from 23.6 to 49.6 t/ha, i.e. by more than 2 times.