People have learned how to cultivate the land a few thousand years ago. To get their own food, representatives of ancient civilizations mastered the simplest agrotechnical techniques and cultivated various cultures suitable for food. Over time, agriculture has become an increasingly progressive science. And today, man has largely subordinated nature to himself through the use of various drugs and the application of the latest technology of agriculture.
However, in our days, many owners of land, on the contrary, refuse to use "chemistry" in favor of more natural ways. The use of warm beds, organic and precise farming, etc. are gaining popularity. Popular methods include sideration. This is not an innovation, but an agrotechnical device, known long ago. Let's find out what its meaning and features are.
The essence of sideration
To fast-growing plants - siderates - include mustard , oil radish, rapeseed, winter rye , peas, lupine, vetch, clover, alfalfa, etc. These technical crops do not yield crops in the usual sense for us. Instead, they use their green mass - after cutting it is embedded in the soil for enrichment, and sometimes used as mulch.
With the help of plant-siderates, the soil of the site is enriched with organic, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium. The roots of these crops well loosen the soil, fill it with oxygen. And after embedding in the ground a green mass of siderates, decomposing, increases fertility. Ciderates also perform a phytosanitary function: they suppress the growth of weed grasses and secrete alkaloids, which stop the pathogenic processes taking place in contaminated soils. In short, the use of siderates is very useful and can be applied in any garden. All this is realized with the help of technology of short crop rotation. After harvesting the main crop, which was grown on the site, the so-called intermediate crop is planted on the same site. Then it is mowed and closed in soil - the timing of this depends on the type of plant and whether it refers to winter or spring.
And now we will understand when it is necessary to sow and when to dig in the siderates.
When should sowers be sown?
Sowing siderates, as already mentioned, follows after harvesting the main crop. Usually this is a period of time, beginning with the third decade of July and ending with the first decade of August. It is not necessary to delay the sowing with sowing, since these plants must gain sufficient biomass before the onset of cold weather.
Often, the syderates are sown before planting seedlings of the main crop, in the spring. In this case, the siderates are also not excavated, and some time they grow with the seedlings, then the soil on the bed is loosened and mulched by the cut out top.
In the autumn, winter siderates should be sown if you plan to leave them in the garden for the winter.
At the same time, each siderial culture has its own differences. When planning their sowing, it is better to ask beforehand when it is better to sow, for example, alfalfa in spring or autumn.
When to dig in siderates?
Cut the siderates, as a rule, before the beginning of their flowering. This is done with a Fokine flat cutter or a conventional cultivator. The soil after the cutting of the siderates is by no means overpassed, otherwise the meaning of the whole undertaking will be reduced to zero.
The cut-off times directly depend on the time of planting:
- sownats sown in early spring are cut off not earlier than May, when they
reach the budding stage; - summer green fertilizers are usually planted on vacationers in this year's beds, they are cut and buried before the cedar culture blossoms;
- if you planted the syderates in the fall, they can be cut before frost and covered in the soil, and you can leave until the next spring (this applies to winter crops).
There is another approach to sideration - some truck farmers do not fill the green mass in the soil, but, cutting it with a flat cutter, leave it right on the beds. This is especially good for light sandy soils - cut green fertilizers cover the surface of the earth, protecting its upper layer from leaching of nutrients.