Monday, April 30, 2007

Fertilizer Topdressing Methods Used

All our crops were fertilized with chicken manure and compost as basal fertilizer. Our normal procedure is that during flowering stage or 25 to 30 days after transplanting, we topdress fertilizer to supplement the basal fertilizer. This is important because the plants would be needing more nutrients as they shift to their botanical transformation as in flowering to fruiting (eg. succhinni).

We do not use inorganic fertilizers, we make use of processed chicken manure (PCM) and crumbled organic fertilizer (COF). Both are applied in three ways. First, they can be applied in between rows of the plants then covered with soil from the canals of the plots. This is is beneficial but labor intensive because you have to scrape off the top soil from the canal with a hoe and put back the soil on the plot to cover the topdressed fertilizer. Beneficial in the sense that the topsoil washed off to the plots' canals are brought back to the plants and used together with the topdressing.

The saecond method followed is by drilling PCM or COF through small holes near the plants root areas and covering it with soil. This method allows the plant to immediately use the fertilizer.

The third method is through fertigation. PCM and COF are mixed thouroughly with the water to be used in irrigation, in our case, from a deeply excavated water hole. Watering cans are used to fetch the water and applied through overhead irrigation.

All three are effective methods.

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