
Over excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides on your farming land, the fertility of its soil can fall at risk.
As a result of this, your farming practices may have to be hindered. Which is why it’s highly crucial for you to keep rejuvenating and maintaining your farm’s fertility.
Soil Fertility
And how to do that right?
Here’s a bunch of tips that can guarantee you improved soil fertility on your farmland.
1. Growing Grain Legumes
Whether you grow legume grains as pulses or as green manure, one great quality of this crop species is that it naturally fixes atmospheric nitrogen. This will let you cut-corners on synthetic nitrogen-fertilizers which adversely affect the soil in a number of ways. Now, as you will not be using nitrogen fertilizers as excessively as you’d be otherwise, the quality of your soil will upgrade and you can maintain it by following the same practices again and again. This method is so effective that nitrogen-fixing legumes form the base for sustainable farming systems incorporating integrated nutrient management.
2. Incorporate Cover Crops
Another way of improving soil quality is by growing cover crops to it. These crops add significantly to the organic matter value of soil. This helps revitalize the potency/fertility of soil enabling it to efficiently grow crops and keep doing so for a longer span of time. Just like the first technique, this one too is easy to maintain and keep up with. Examples for cover crops are ryegrass, crimson clover, oats, oil-seed radishes, and cereal rye. Growing these crops will help reduce soil compaction, improving overall soil fertility.
3. Only Use Qualified Fertilizers
Your crops’ and your soil’s health depends a great deal on the fertilizers that you use. While most fertilizer companies claim that their products are best and healthiest, not all of them really make the cut to be called safe. For this reason, it becomes important for you to make the right choice of fertlizers for using in your farm. What you can basically do is, look for the N-P-K ratio. Whenever you are to choose a fertilizer for your farm or lawn, you need to make sure it’s N-P-K ratio is adequate. The number denoting the ratio of three important plant nutrients, namely nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) in the fertilizer is a significant factor affecting the quality grade of a fertilizer. For example, high-quality fertilizers have a higher N-P-K ratio when compared to those which lie low in the quality rankings.
4. Keep your Soil Healthy by using Farming Devices
Another way of making sure that your soil’s health is improved and maintained is by employing devices like mulch mower and fertilizer spreaders. A mulching mower is a device that helps you return leaves, grass, and other farming by-products back to the soil. This not only cleans up your lawn/farm but also adds greatly to the health gradient of its soil. This is one of the simplest ways of fulfilling your soil’s natural nitrogen requirements. And while the manual mulching process can get you in sweat, a mulching device will save you a great deal of money and time. Similarly, fertilizer spreaders improve production yield, fill manual labor void and increase focus on accuracy. No wonder, using these devices can help you improvise all your farming processes easily, keeping your soil’s health maintained at the same time. Hopefully, this was helpful.