Growing Food: A Guide to Food Production

This term is used to indicate the amount of seed that is needed to sow (or to “plant”) an area of land. The seed rate is normall ...

Hybrid Vigour This is the genetic phenomenon where the characteristics shown by the offspring are more marked than the average o ...

collection of plant types, each type having proven to be adapted to the growing conditions in a particular locality or climatic ...

crop. This ability to enrich soils by fixing nitrogen in them is of great value to food producers and deserves to be better unde ...

Seed should be planted immediately after inoculation, and protected from direct sunlight. Although you can buy seed that has alr ...

How to Obtain Inoculum Ideally the seed suppliers themselves are able to provide the appropriate strains of Rhizobia inoculum. H ...

activity, deters slugs from hollowing out the grain, and also deters birds. Bayer expects In addition to fungicides and insectic ...

More modern non-mercury dressings tend to be more specific in their action, so the trend nowadays is to use a cocktail of variou ...

order of preference (most important at the top, least important at the bottom) but also by use of different sized blocks—see Exa ...

Sometimes called change crops, for reasons explained below. In many parts of the world food growers have a marked preference for ...

Despite the advantages of break crops there is often resistance and reluctance by farmers to grow them. The reasons may be based ...

The climbing crops benefit from the nitrogen supplied by the trees, from the support the trees provide and are also protected fr ...

Pioneer crops are normally associated with grassland or with recently cultivated “new” land. When old grassland has become exhau ...

a lesser role, include broad beans protecting lettuce, and sunflowers protecting green peppers. In hot climates a wide range of ...

Principles of Crop Rotation Planning a crop rotation, and adapting it when necessary, requires paying attention to a number of f ...

one crop is planted in small areas over a period of time so that only a little matures at a time. In this way a continuous supp ...

The total yield per unit area can be higher than with monocultures, and soil fertility is maintained for a longer period. The s ...

Alley Cropping—Method Rows of trees are planted 4–8 metres apart. During the main growing season, which usually coincides with t ...

Cover crops and smother crops are commonly used as green manure after they have served their purpose. Legumes are the most commo ...

clever crop rotation is practised to break the life cycle of pests and diseases. Slugs love mulches; Mulch material can interfe ...