GREEN MANAGEMENT
Since some organic seeds may be of limited availability, EC regulation 834/07 allows the use of untreated seeds if stocks run out. We therefore ask you to pay attention to the product purchased by carefully reading the type of certification it has. If the product is untreated it will be necessary to request the exemption from ENSE 30 days before proceeding with sowing.
WHY DO GREEN MANUFACTURING AND WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
Among the foundations of healthy agriculture we have that the soil should never be left bare (only the desert is bare land) and that the more plant species there are, the more biodiversity we have: given that plants communicate above all through their roots, the more variety different types are present and the more "richness of information" there is: to achieve this, green manures, grassing, intra-seeding and green mulching are used.
Green manure is an agronomic practice consisting in the burial of specific crops with the aim of covering the soil and maintaining or increasing the fertility of the soil. Usually the green manure lasts from 4 weeks to six months and is then buried: It would be useful to follow the burial with a treatment of cornolet and fladen to help the digestion of the organic substance
Green cover, on the other hand, is a technique to keep the soil covered and increase the organic substance which lasts from 1 to 5-6 years. The grass cover can be used to feed livestock, to make hay or it can be chopped and then grown again: here too it is useful to speed up the digestion of the organic substance by using 500 and fladen
Another technique that is no longer widely used, but is very useful for cereals is the intra-seeding of legumes in cereal fields in spring, because one of the greatest damages is leaving the soil bare after the wheat harvest in June, July and August, in the warmer months, where a lot of useful bathetric and fungal life is lost
Finally, green mulching in the garden with small legumes is gaining ground
The results that can be obtained are of various types:
– increase in organic matter in the soil;
– slowing down of erosive phenomena;
– maintenance of the nitrate nitrogen content
– reduction of drought because the humus in the soil retains up to 10-12 times the volume of water
– increase in bacteria and fungi in the soil (in one hectare of healthy soil we have up to 100 quintals of living beings)
Legume green manure is particularly important as these are among the few plant species capable of directly fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Usually at least 8 families of plants are used to formulate green manures.
Green manure and grassing, therefore, represent a means of fertilizing the land, even in hot-arid countries, regardless of the availability of manure and is therefore a widely used practice in organic farming.
The land is often over-trodden and has a structure that prevents it from carrying out normal biological functions. With a green manure mixture you can significantly improve the structure of the soil and enrich the life of the subsoil by improving its fertility. In this way it also improves biodiversity which determines a natural balance between the various elements useful for containing and/or avoiding problems caused by harmful insects (e.g. aphids). Plants with great growth strength are useful, with roots that can break up the soil and reach deep. The aerial part must attract a considerable amount of beneficial insects for a long period.
In this context the land rapidly increases in organic matter and other nutrients. The mixtures also have the important function of eliminating weeds, even the most difficult ones (such as couch grass). Here you will find a very wide range of green manures and grassings and also mono essences to make the right mixture yourself. We remind you that at Agri.Bio every year we hold an 8-hour course on green manure, its function and its composition