Effect of Peat Grade, Irrigation System and Nutrition on the Production of Nursery Stock in Closed Systems

摘要

Containerised nursery stock plants in Ireland are almost exclusively produced in peatgrowing media using controlled release fertilisers and are irrigated by means of overheadspraylines with the drainage water going to waste. Concern about nutrient pollution and theneed to use water and nutrients more efficiently may lead in the future to regulations aboutcapturing and re-cycling drainage water. This would particularly apply where nutrients areincorporated in the irrigation as in liquid feeding or where hard water is being acidified toneutralise bicarbonate.These experiments were started to study the performance of nursery stock plants in closedsystems and to compare ebb and flood and capillary irrigation with overhead spraylines. Acomparison of a liquid feeding regime as against the use of controlled release fertilisers wasalso included.The use of fractionated peat allows peat substrates with a wide range of physicalproperties to be prepared by using graded fractions or blends. It was thought desirable toinclude these in the experiments as there may well be interactions between irrigation systemsand substrate properties