Thursday, January 7, 2010

Week 2 Nitrate

We will track the concentration of nitrate in the soil, which is the most difficult nutrient to manage well. Again the graph is divided into three regions. I want to keep the nitrate levels between about 20 and 100 ppm (the green zone). After week 1 the levels were higher than the target in the 20 cm FullStop detector (orange zone) and much higher in the 40 cm detector (red zone). I did not apply any fertiliser. The source of the nitrate is decomposition of organic matter and this is something I have little control over. Already the heavy rain in week 1 has pushed nitrate deep into the soil below the growing roots. At the 20 cm depth there was a huge drop between weeks 1 and week 2. This nitrate is being leached downwards, not being used by the young crop.

1 comment:

Victor Arenas said...

In the graph, is it Nitrate anion (NO3) or N-Nitrate???