Zoffo Plants and Manures
Organic Plants
You’ve been trying to eat more organic foods, both to decrease the amount of pesticides you and your family consume and to help protect the environment. But take one look at your grocery store receipt and you know that buying organic can get very expensive, very fast. Luckily, there’s a way to grow your own delicious, fresh produce while having fun and learning at the same time: organic gardening!
Organic gardening
means you won’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, but that doesn’t mean your plants fend for themselves. There are an array of tools you can use to bolster plant health and ward off pests.
In order to get the best results with your new organic garden, you’ll want to make sure the soil is properly conditioned. You have to eat, and so do plants, so make sure your veggies get lots of fresh nutrients. Healthy soil helps build up strong, productive plants. Chemical soil treatments can not only seep into your food, but they can also harm the beneficial bacteria, worms, and other microbes in the soil.
Manures
Manures are plant and animal wastes that are used as sources of plant nutrients. They release nutrients after their decomposition. The art of collecting and using wastes from animal, human and vegetable sources for improving crop productivity is as old as agriculture. Manures are the organic materials derived from animal, human and plant residues which contain plant nutrients in complex organic forms. Naturally occurring or synthetic chemicals containing plant nutrients are called fertilizers. Manures with low nutrient, content per unit quantity have longer residual effect besides improving soil physical properties compared to fertilizer with high nutrient content. Major sources of manures are:
- Cattle shed wastes-dung, urine and slurry from biogas plants
- Human habitation wastes-night soil, human urine, town refuse, sewage, sludge and sullage
- Poultry Jitter, droppings of sheep and goat
- Slaughterhouse wastes-bone meal, meat meal, blood meal, horn and hoof meal, Fish wastes
- Byproducts of agro industries-oil cakes, bagasse and press mud, fruit and vegetable processing wastes etc
- Crop wastes-sugarcane trash, stubbles and other related material
- Water hyacinth, weeds and tank silt, and
- Green manure crops and green leaf manuring material
Bulky organic manures Bulky organic manures contain small percentage of nutrients and they are applied in large quantities. Farmyard manure (FYM), compost and green-manure are the most important and widely used bulky organic manures. Use of bulky organic manures has several advantages:
- They supply plant nutrients including micronutrients
- They improve soil physical properties like structure, water holding capacity etc.,
- They increase the availability of nutrients
- Carbon dioxide released during decomposition acts as a CO2 fertilizer and
- Plant parasitic nematodes and fungi are controlled to some extent by altering the balance of microorganisms in the soil.