10 Ways to Tell If Your Land Is Fertile(2)
10 Ways to Tell If Your Land Is Fertile
Experience, the technique that never goes out of fashion! In fact, in the long history of farming, farmers who have been dealing with the land for a long time have accumulated and summarised a set of mature and rich practical experience in identifying soil fertility.
VI. See water retention
Water seeps down, but at a gentle rate, and can be maintained for about 1 week with a single irrigation is fertile land; water that does not seep down after irrigation or seeps down quickly along the cracks is poor soil.
VII. See if the night tide
Night tide is a phenomenon where the temperature of the topsoil drops at night and the warm water vapour in the deeper soil moves upwards and condenses into water when it meets the cooler topsoil and moistens it. The night tide phenomenon illustrates two advantages of the soil: firstly, it is highly permeable and allows warm water vapour to move upwards. Secondly, the soil is deep enough to create a temperature difference. Therefore, soils with night tide are basically fertile soils; without night tide, the soil is sclerotic and poor.
VIII. Look at fertility
Soil is a negatively charged colloid that can exchange and adsorb some cations (i.e. nutrients) to retain fertiliser, and these adsorbed nutrients are gradually released from the soil for crop uptake as the crop grows. Fertile soils are usually able to absorb more cations and have a longer lasting effect. Poor soils, on the other hand, usually have less cations to absorb and most of the nutrients are lost with water, so the fertilising effect comes and goes quickly.
IX. Look at the plant species
Some plants like fertiliser, so they must grow more in fertile soil; some plants are tolerant of infertile soil, so they grow much better in poor soil than other plants. So, depending on the growth habits of the plants, some specific plant crops can be used as indicators of whether the soil is fertile or not. For example, soils where redhead paste, goosegrass and caper grass grow are usually fertile; soils where cowslip, duckweed, trillium, wild orchids and wild onions grow are usually poor.
X. Look at the species of animal
The reasoning is similar to that of plants. Soils with snails, loaches, earthworms, large locusts, etc. are fertile; those with small ants, large ants, etc. are mostly poor.
It may not be as accurate as the instruments, but it is almost as certain.
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- 10 Ways to Tell If Your Land Is Fertile(2)