It is difficult to find crops that like heavy, dense soil. The root system of any plant needs access to moisture and oxygen. The most common answer to the question for what purpose is it necessary to loosen the soil around plants is to increase the air permeability and moisture permeability of the soil. However, do not forget about the additional benefits: destruction of young weeds, prevention of parasitic diseases.
Why is a loose structure important for soil?
Heavy soil that sticks together in clumps does not allow water, fertilizers and oxygen to penetrate deeply into the deeper layers.After rain, it forms a hard crust on the surface, through which water, instead of flowing to the roots, flows into grooves and quickly evaporates. In compacted loamy soil or under a thick crust, the roots of the plant literally suffocate from lack of oxygen, grow more slowly, and thin young roots may die.
Loose soil, on the contrary, forms internal reservoirs, small capillaries in which moisture is stored for several days and is available to plants. The need for watering is reduced (because of this, loosening is often called “dry watering”). The best effect will be obtained if it is combined with mulching and fertilizing the beds.
Useful properties of loosening:
- helps increase soil breathability;
- promotes better absorption of fertilizers;
- prevents rapid evaporation of moisture;
- destroys pests by destroying their nests;
- damages the root system of weeds.
Soil looseness is especially important when growing crops from seeds. The seedlings may not have enough nutrients contained in the grain to break through the hard surface crust of the soil to the sun (this is especially true for small-seeded plants, such as carrots or parsley).
Loosening time
The first time loosening is carried out in the spring, when the soil is prepared for planting. They loosen immediately after digging the beds to a greater depth (up to 25 cm), then level them.
After planting the seedlings, the soil is cultivated two weeks later. If the crop is grown from seeds, then loosening is recommended to begin after germination.If there is a need to loosen the soil before germination (a crust has formed on the surface or the crop is demanding on the airiness, lightness of the soil, for example, carrots and onions), it is necessary to loosen it extremely carefully, exactly to the depth that the crust occupies (2-3 cm).
In the fall, at the end of the gardening season, the beds are dug up and left until spring. Loosening is strictly not recommended: dry clods of soil quickly and thoroughly freeze, killing the larvae of parasitic insects stored in the soil.
What should be the depth
The depth of loosening depends on the season, as well as on the type of crop. In the spring before planting it is greatest, and young shoots require careful handling. In summer, the recommended depth is 5-7 cm.
It is important to remember: loosening is not digging up the beds! Do not turn up the fertile soil, which is located under the surface crust.
Caring for different crops
There are continuous loosening (pre-planting and pre-emergence) and inter-bed loosening, which is carried out after the seedlings appear on the surface, at some distance from them. For young plants, the “protection zone”, in which it is not recommended to loosen the soil, is small; as the bushes grow, its diameter increases to 10-15 cm.
Pumpkin crops are the most vulnerable to loosening - they have a delicate root system with abundant horizontal branching, so the beds should be loosened very superficially and carefully.
But cabbage crops (all types) always react positively to loosening. The permitted depth is 6 cm or more.
After planting legumes and some root crops (carrots, potatoes), loosening should be carried out until the first shoots appear and even a thin crust should not be allowed to form on the surface.
It is not recommended to loosen beds with onions, beets and celery until the seedlings germinate and are thoroughly greened.
Garden tree seedlings also need loosening. However, their roots prefer to branch horizontally under the very surface of the soil, so soil cultivation is carried out superficially, to a depth of 4 cm.
