Green fertilizers or siderates significantly improve the quality of the soil, making it more fertile without the introduction of manure and other fertilizers. Organic farming like siderat often uses oats. Its root system makes the soil loose, and the green mass enriches with nitrogen, potassium and other useful elements.
When to sow oats as siderat?
Such a siderat as an oats are sown in the early spring, when only the earth will dry out, and in autumn after harvesting. Since it is cold-resistant, or even cold-loving culture, it gives the best yield of green mass in the spring, while it's still cold outside.
In addition, oats are very fond of growing on moist soil, and this effect occurs only in the spring after the melting of snow, because otherwise it would have to regularly water the crops of this siderata. Spring planting of oats is carried out approximately 2-3 weeks before planting another crop, after all the syderates are mowed at the time of budding, when they contain the maximum amount of microelements, but the seeds are not yet tied up.
After a few weeks, the young shoots are cut with a flat cutter and embedded in the soil to a depth of 5 to 15 centimeters, depending on its structure - in the clayey deeper, into the light sandy shallower. The surplus of green mass is removed to the compost, where due to the properties of the siderate, the process of decomposition of the other components also takes place more quickly.
Siderat oats are sown in autumn. When harvested. The ground before this must be deeply loosened, otherwise there will not be a good increase in the green mass. Before frosts come and the plant throws out the ear, the oats are mowed and mixed with the soil. This increases the water capacity and looseness of the earth.
Sowing rate
When spring sowing is always taken more seeds for a dense planting on the green mass. In spring it is taken from 1.8 to 2 kilograms of oats per one hundred square meters of land. At autumn sowing this volume is reduced by one third.