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Soils And Crop Changes

Categories: Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation

Peas and sweet peas do not grow well continuously in the same ground. I

know this practically in my experience, but in no book have I ever found

why they do not grow.



There are two very good reasons why some classes of plants cannot be

well grown continuously in the same piece of ground. One is the

depletion of available plant food, the other the formation of injurious

compounds by the plants, or the grad
al increase of fungoid, bacterial

or animate pests in the soil, which finally become abundant enough to

seriously hinder growth. Different plants take the plant foods, as

nitrogen, lime, potash, phosphates, etc., in different proportion. More

important, perhaps, is the fact that the root acids that extract these

foods are of different types and strength. Thus before many seasons it

may happen that most of the plant food of one or more kinds may be

nearly exhausted as far as that kind of plant is concerned that has

grown there continually, while there would be plenty of easily available

food for plants with a different kind of root system and different root

acids, etc. This is one reason why rotation of crops is so good; it

gives a combination of root acids and root systems to the soil during a

term of years, and it also frees the soil from one certain kind of

organism because it cannot survive the absence of the particular plants

on which it thrives.



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