How to Choose and Apply Fertilizer in Summer? Master These Tips and Precautions
Summer is a period of vigorous growth for many vegetables, fruits and other crops, and also a good time for fertilizer demand. However, many growers do not know how to choose fertilizer or apply it, which has led to a serious reduction in their yields. Let's take a look below at what tips there are for choosing fertilizer in summer and what precautions there are for fertilizing in summer.
1. What tips are there for choosing fertilizer in summer?
First, choose quick-acting types. As temperatures rise, the ability of crops to absorb nutrients also strengthens. As for the fertilizer demand pattern of summer crops, on the one hand the demand intensity is high, that is, more fertilizer is needed. On the other hand, the soil is required to have a sustained fertilizer supply capacity, but summer has a lot of rain and fertilizer loss is serious, so summer fertilization should easily adopt the method of small amounts applied multiple times to quickly replenish nutrients.
In terms of form selection, it is recommended to mainly use quick-acting nitrate nitrogen fertilizer and ammonium nitrogen fertilizer to quickly replenish nutrients for crops.
Second, choose crop-specific fertilizers suited to the growth goal. For example, the Aihu Plant Vaccine series products that can be rapidly absorbed on the page; for fruit-bearing crops or tuber crops, summer fertilizer selection should mainly be quick-acting, high-nitrogen fertilizer, or high-nitrogen and high-potassium fertilizer, such as for apples, citrus, grapes, kiwifruit, pomegranates and other crops.
For leafy vegetable crops harvested for their leaves or branches, summer fertilization should mainly supplement nitrogen fertilizer.
2. What precautions are there for fertilizing in summer?
1. Fertilizer quantity
In hot and dry seasons, under strong light, the temperature of bare ground can reach 50°C, evaporation is intense, and the concentration of the surface water solution rises sharply. At this time, if the same amount of fertilizer as under normal weather is applied, crop yield not only cannot be maintained or increased, but is very likely to decrease. For example, when precipitation is moderate, applying 12 kg of pure nitrogen per mu to corn may achieve high yield; if the same amount of fertilizer is still applied during high temperature and drought, it faces the risk of yield reduction. Some farmers reported that last year, during high temperature and drought, the fertilization level for Atractylodes macrocephala was the same as the year before, and as a result the yield of Atractylodes macrocephala did not increase but decreased; the plot without fertilizer instead had a higher yield than the fertilized one.
2. Fertilization time
Fertilizing in the morning, although the personnel feel more comfortable during operation, as the sun rises the temperature rises sharply, water evaporates quickly, the crop absorption time is short, and fertilizer utilization rate is low; fertilizing at noon, due to the high temperature, is not conducive to fertilizer absorption or personnel operation; fertilizing in the evening is both suitable for personnel operation and can make up for the shortcoming of short crop absorption time (because nighttime is a process of temperature decrease, surface water evaporation weakens, and moisture retention time is long), making it the best fertilization time.
3. Fertilization weather
Do not fertilize on rainy days, so as to avoid fertilizer loss; do not fertilize when the weather is stuffy, do not fertilize on foggy days, and do not fertilize when the temperature is high, so as to avoid causing plant mildew, rot and disease, so fertilization should be carried out on sunny days.