The One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
Restoration Agriculture - Real-World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard
Permaculture: A Designers' Manual by Bill Mollison
Maine DOT Native Plants for Roadside Restoration (176p)
Washtenaw County Rain Garden Handbook (14p)
Northeast Cover Crop Species Selector Tool
Conservation agriculture, and in particular no-till systems, generally yield improvements in both soil char-acteristics (e.g. structure, and water holding capacity) and soil processes (such as runoff and hence erosion). Nevertheless, during the first years of no-till, the soil is prone to compaction due to the poor structure, missing ploughing activities, and passage of tractors and machinery, thus favouring surface runoff and soil erosion. After four years of using no-till practices, reductions of over 50% in runoff volumes and 50% to 95% in sediment losses were achieved.
We concluded that: in the rice–wheat rotation system, returning...rice straw and...wheat straw to the field helps increase the organic carbon content and quality of the soil and promotes high annual yields; conventional mixing of straw into the field can increase the organic carbon content of the soil in a short time; long-term use of concentrated ditch-buried straw return has obvious advantages over other straw returning methods in increasing the accumulation of soil organic carbon; the combination of little or no tillage plus straw returning helps increase the content and quality of organic carbon in soil.
No Till-Residue Retention also increased the energy use efficiency (EUE), energy productivity (EP), netreturns, and reduced carbon footprint of the system compared with those under Conventional Till-Residue Incorporation.
Overall, N2O emissions in NT were 40–55% lower than in CT, for both in situ measurements (Period I) and modelled estimations. These differences could be ascribed to the higher waterfilled pore space (WFPS) and soil nitrate availability in CT than in NT. No-till also increased SOC content (28%; 0–5 cm) and earthworm abundance (5 times) compared with CT. The combination of NT and rye CC that led to the lowest N2O emissions and highest yields should be recommended in the Po Valley region.
Results from this 6-year field study evaluating the effects of soil tillage and cover crops on crop yield and on the status of soil fertility suggest that no-till (NT) coupled with winter cover crops (CCs) does not reduce crop yield even during the transition period, in a temperate climate and in silty-clay soil, compared with conventional tillage (CT).
The trial revealed...human urine is strongly alkaline in reactionwith moderate amount of nutrients (N, P, K, Mg, Ca and Na)...Application of either urine or inorganic fertilizer significantly (P < 0.05) increased plant nutrient uptake compared with the control. Human urine applied at the rate of 20,000 L/ha in soils of Cross River State, with low nutrient status significantly increased the growth and yield of okra more than the inorganic fertilizer.
The results of this study indicated that human urine performs better when used in combination with compost than alone and that it can be used as a promising fertilizer source in sweet pepper production. They also provide valuable insights into the effectiveuse of human urine for crop production.
Though yield produced by urine fertilized treatments were not comparable to the yield of industrial fertilized treatments; it has reached to a satisfactory level...If other nutrients, such as phosphorous and potassium can be supplied together, human urine can be considered as a potential nitrogen fertilizer in plant production
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