2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Fertilizers are different, but organic matter is especially popular with summer residents, because it is much more useful than any "chemistry"! And often such a valuable fertilizer as sapropel is undeservedly forgotten, moreover, some summer residents do not even suspect about its existence! But sapropel is a substance of completely natural origin! What kind of fertilizer is it, and what can it be useful for?
Getting to know each other better
Sapropel is a multi-layered sediment accumulating at the very bottom of all kinds of fresh water bodies (mainly non-flowing lakes), which are formed from soil, the remains of a wide variety of living organisms and dying aquatic vegetation. And the most important conditions for the gradual formation of this kind of deposits are the restriction of oxygen access in combination with stagnant fresh water. It may take up to several decades to get an impressive amount of sapropel, and during this time it is saturated with a truly incredible amount of various useful compounds!
By the way, some people mistakenly confuse sapropel with the well-known silt, but these are completely different formations - it will not be difficult to find silt in almost any water body, and its formation takes much less time. But in terms of composition, sludge is noticeably inferior to sapropel!
The sapropel extracted from the lakes is thoroughly dried, and in the process of this drying it takes the form of a free-flowing light powder. If you abandon the drying stage, the valuable organic matter will slowly start to rot and, of course, will lose all its benefits. And before sending sapropel for sale to stores, for the convenience of its use, the powder is often pressed into tablets or granules.
What is the benefit?
Sapropel is rich not only in a number of useful microelements, but also in humic acids, and the latter, in turn, boast the ability to stimulate the growth of crops planted on the site, disinfect the soil and suppress the development of all kinds of pathogenic microorganisms.
Too heavy clay soils, after adding sapropel to them, become much lighter and looser, and this fertilizer also contributes to the preservation of soil fertility for at least three to five years! In addition, this substance helps to increase the volume of humus in the soil, contributes to its speedy cleansing from a wide variety of nitrates with fungi and from pathogenic microorganisms or bacteria, and also enriches the heavily depleted soil, thus forcing it to start "working" again, which is also in considerable degree contributes to the formation of a fertile layer. And any substrate, generously flavored with sapropel, boasts a rather valuable ability to retain moisture much longer, therefore, such soils will have to be watered much less often!
Sapropel also brings a lot of benefits to vegetation: the root system of young crops develops much faster, annuals "stock up" with all kinds of nutrient compounds at once for the whole season, and flower bed vegetation boasts much longer flowering. Sapropel is an excellent assistant for stimulating the growth of garden and garden vegetation, endowed with the ability not only to significantly increase its yield, but also to significantly improve the quality of the harvested fruits! And it also perfectly stores a wide variety of root crops, since sapropel is an excellent preservative!
How to use?
In order to improve the structure of the soil (especially for heavy clay soil), sapropel is first evenly distributed over the soil surface, and then the earth is thoroughly dug up to a depth of twelve centimeters. As for the consumption, three kilograms of sapropel are taken for each square meter of the cultivated area. The result obtained during such manipulations will be similar to replacing the soil! And in such a soil, you can immediately plant all kinds of crops: the germination of seeds in this case will noticeably accelerate, the immunity of the planted plants will become stronger, and the yield will increase significantly!
If you want to grow healthy, strong and strong seedlings, it is recommended to sow the seeds of various crops in the soil previously combined with sapropel. And it is advisable to dive young seedlings into exactly the same soil mixture! It is important to take into account that for different crops the composition of the mixtures will be different: for watermelons and zucchini with cucumbers, sapropel, sand and earth are taken in compliance with the ratio 3: 4: 6, for peppers with eggplants and tomatoes - 1: 2: 7, and for cabbage, as well as for leafy or spicy crops - 3: 4: 2. There is also a recipe for a universal soil, which is equally well suited for absolutely any crops - for this, three parts of the soil are combined with one part of the sapropel.
And the sapropel used for mulching the tree trunks will provide a decent feeding for the fruit and berry crops growing in the garden! Around fruit trees, a layer of five to seven centimeters is usually laid, and around shrubs - two to four centimeters. And after that, the soil must be slightly loosened and watered! At the same time, it is permissible to carry out no more than three such dressings per season.
And one more useful life hack - in order to increase the potato yield by one and a half times at once, before planting the tubers, it will not hurt to add sapropel to each hole (at the rate of three to six kilograms per square meter)!
Are you familiar with sapropel, and have you ever used it on your site?
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