The environment is really on its changing mood as we have seen in the summer season of 2010/2011 where widespread flooding has occurred in many areas and the recorded abnormal snowfalls of heavier than the normal occurrences of previous years during winter periods have also aggravated to the saturation of our soil conditions. These abnormal situations have greatly affected the nutrients of the soil which we shall be discussing in this article so that you may understand what to do to keep your crops growing.
The soil condition is dependent upon the availability of the nutrients it carries as the crop you are growing in the soil absorbs what is the available nutrients in it. So if there is an excessive flooding in your area, in most probability the nutrients in your soil is affected and in such cases, you have to act accordingly so you may know what is likely to have been lost or leached by the flood instead of waiting its effect on your plants which would show off the nutrient deficiency symptoms as you go on. And what do we mean by leached or leaching.
Leaching happens when there is too much flooding in such a way that there is no more room for the soil to hold any moisture and the water is getting to be pushed downwards to the root zone and takes with it the nutrients. It occurs at different magnitude and varies with the types of soil and in accordance with its capacity to hold water, so that nutrients are less to leach in clay than from sandy type of soils. Aside from flooding, the other factor that affects leaching is the amount of water needed by the plant. Listed below are the various nutrients needed by the plant and how they are leached due to the factors affecting leaching.
1. Nitrogen - Nitrogen comes in different forms such as ammonium, nitrate and nitrite and it is the nitrite form that can be easily leached from a water saturated soil. This nutrient comes from animal manure and decaying plant materials or fertilizers and is lost substantially when the soil suffers saturated conditions. It would occur rapidly if the soil is coarse textured sandy but it is slower when the soil type is loam and clay soils because water moves slower on these types of soils. There is gaseous loss of nitrogen when soil microorganisms are active while reducing nitrate when the soil is saturated although soil microorganisms are not usually effective when the soil is saturated even on decomposing organic matter and this slows down the release of nitrogen from these fertilizer materials. However, other nitrogen like ammonium does not leach since it is attached to the soil and prevents going with the water movements.
2. Phosphorous, Sulphates and Calcium - After the flooding, the beneficial root fungi called mycorrhizae which most plants are associated with are often reduced and would result to their handicapped to reached for phosphorous which are reduced dramatically under wet situations. The other mineral nutrients needed by plants which are sulphates and calcium are equally prone to leaching especially during flooding of the soil. After finding out the nutrient deficiency of the soil where your plant gets its food, it would be easier to you to feed it properly without venturing into a guessing game.
