SOIL CONDITIONING AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTION

The most desirable qualities of a soil for horticultural field crops are the absence of seedbed and plant establishment limitations (cloddiness, slaking, capping, wind erosion) followed by limitations to crop water supply and root efficiency (available water capacity interacting with rain/irrigation, profile structural state determining root growth and water and air movement processes).

Inherent soil properties – particle size distribution and organic matter status – determine the range of soil moisture suitable for timely cultivation, sowing and transplanting as well as the stability of aggregates against water impact, cap formation and susceptibility to wind erosion.

Artificial "conditioning" can be an aid to management if the process alleviates such inherent restrictions economically.
Heavy textured soils, sands and peats can be "diluted" with appropriate additions or in situ deep mixing.
Enhanced biological activity as well as direct alteration of the physical structural state is possible through additions of organic matter (FYM, Ley-arable rotation).

Aggravation of soil physical limitations by sodium enrichment of the exchange complex can be relieved through liming or more rapidly with gypsum.
Sugar beet waste lime additions would contribute to improvement of biological activity besides the direct liming effect.

Small quantities of water soluble polymers – polyvinyl alcohol, polyacrylamides – help stabilise seedbed aggregates against water slaking while emulsions – polyvinyl acetate, rubber latex, bitumin emulsions – protect sands against wind erosion.
Whole soil conditioning with such material is economically impractical.

All these treatments – not fully tested in experiments – can show real practical benefits only under severe limiting conditions for a given crop or season.

Symposium on the Timing of Field vegetable Production

D.B. Davies, L.V. Vaidyanathan

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1978.72.25