Young rye seedlings in field
The cultivation of all cereal crops is similar. Most are annual plants that can be grown from tropical lowlands to Siberia. No matter where it’s grown, all cereals need good soil management. One of the crucial techniques for reducing production cost is crop rotation. Repeated farming on the same field or farming in monoculture leads to disease, insect pest and weed occurrence, resulting in lower yields. Suitable preculture for sowing cereals are legumes, oilseeds and fodder crops. In fact, it can be any crop which isn’t a member of the grass family and leaves the field early enough to accomplish cereals sowing on time.
Soil management also refers to tillage and soil fertility. Tillage affects soil properties, creates better soil structure and minimizes overall farming costs.
To ensure a good soil fertility, soil needs to be analyzed and depending on the result, adjust an optimum amount of fertilizers. Due to high influence to nitrogen, in cereal fertilization extra caution is needed. Over application of nitrogen causes lodging, reduces yield, quality and harvest of cereals. How much nitrogen to apply, depends on the previous crop, applications of manure and mineral fertilizers and soil type. Most nitrogen fertilizers are applied before sowing.
Sowing of cereals
Sowing can be done in several ways, due to the spacing of rows and seeds within row – sowing in narrow rows, sowing in rows and broadcast sowing. Depending on soil properties and climate, sowing depth varies from 2 to 10 cm.
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