Today, various progressive methods - organic farming, warm beds , the use of EM drugs and others - are extremely common among gardeners and truck farmers. The fashion is returned to the sideration. After all, as you know, everything new is just a well-forgotten old. At a time when fertilizers did not exist in their modern sense, our ancestors used other, no less effective methods.
It's about sowing mustard for soil fertilization. What are the characteristics of this siderata and when should it be sown? Let's find out!
What does the crop of mustard produce in the fall?
Mustard is one of the most popular annual plants that are used as green fertilizers. This means that after sowing it after harvesting, you can improve the soil without using any preparations and make it more fertile. This is achieved through the following properties of mustard:
- the root system of the plant reaches half a meter and at the same depth the ground loosens;
- after the mustard in the soil, the number of earthworms increases - and, accordingly, its air permeability;
- the plant muffles the weeds, reducing the need for weeding;
- green mass is well used for animal feed - by its nutritional properties it can compete with mixed fodders;
- a thick planting of mustard is used to prevent soil erosion - the ground part of plants protects the surface from washing out during heavy rains. This point is very important for sandy soils;
- if you have introduced excessive amounts of nitrogen fertilizers into the soil, plant mustard - it will accumulate excess nitrogen;
- thanks to the content of essential oils, mustard scares off slugs and Colorado beetle, and also effectively fights against phytophthora, scab and other diseases of cultivated plants. This is especially true when row cropping mustard, when it is sown, alternating with other crops.
Sowing time for mustard
There are several ways to use mustard as a siderata. It is sown either in autumn, immediately after harvesting from the site, or in the spring, before sowing the main crop. There is a third way - the intercropping described above, but its purpose is not soil fertilization, but rather pest control.
The ideal option for improving the soil is the first - autumn planting of the siderata. The time for sowing mustard is selected depending on the weather conditions in your area. Usually green fertilizers manage to fulfill their mission in a short time from the emergence of shoots to the beginning of flowering. It is desirable to sow the mustard immediately after the harvest is harvested. Mustard loves moisture, and the land should be still quite wet. This siderate grows well after potatoes and strawberries, but it should not be planted after cabbage, which belongs to the same family as mustard (cruciferous).
Sow grains to a depth of up to 2 cm, in frequent rows or all-round. The norm of sowing mustard per hundred square meters is up to 250 g. And if your site suffers from an abundance of weeds or wireworm attacks, this figure can be doubled. Shoots appear
When sowing seeds for soil fertilization in the fall, they can be left for winter: the mustard will enrich the soil with useful microelements and loosen it, and then in the spring you will not have to dig a site!