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    Water Conservation

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    Molan Jena
    There are several methods for conserving soil moisture outlined in the document. These include mulching, manuring, potholing, tied ridging, and crop rotation. Mulching involves covering soil to prevent evaporation and provide favorable conditions for plant growth. Manuring and improving soil quality helps increase water retention. Potholing only tills and waters around plants, trapping water. Tied ridging makes ridges across slopes to reduce water and soil loss. Crop rotation with different root depths utilizes unused moisture and improves soil structure.

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    Water Conservation

    Uploaded by

    Molan Jena
    41 views4 pages
    There are several methods for conserving soil moisture outlined in the document. These include mulching, manuring, potholing, tied ridging, and crop rotation. Mulching involves covering soil to prevent evaporation and provide favorable conditions for plant growth. Manuring and improving soil quality helps increase water retention. Potholing only tills and waters around plants, trapping water. Tied ridging makes ridges across slopes to reduce water and soil loss. Crop rotation with different root depths utilizes unused moisture and improves soil structure.

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    Water conservation (1)

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    There are several methods for conserving soil moisture outlined in the document. These include mulching, manuring, potholing, tied ridging, and crop rotation. Mulching involves covering soil to prevent evaporation and provide favorable conditions for plant growth. Manuring and improving soil quality helps increase water retention. Potholing only tills and waters around plants, trapping water. Tied ridging makes ridges across slopes to reduce water and soil loss. Crop rotation with different root depths utilizes unused moisture and improves soil structure.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    41 views4 pages

    Water Conservation

    Uploaded by

    Molan Jena
    There are several methods for conserving soil moisture outlined in the document. These include mulching, manuring, potholing, tied ridging, and crop rotation. Mulching involves covering soil to prevent evaporation and provide favorable conditions for plant growth. Manuring and improving soil quality helps increase water retention. Potholing only tills and waters around plants, trapping water. Tied ridging makes ridges across slopes to reduce water and soil loss. Crop rotation with different root depths utilizes unused moisture and improves soil structure.

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    Water conservation

    Soil moisture conservation methods


    There are many methods of soil moisture conservation.
    Moisture is the wetness of the soil and conservation is
    an action of keeping or preserving. Soil moisture
    preservation is, therefore, an act of preserving water in
    the soil. Most of these methods are cheap and required
    materials are locally available. The methods aim to
    provide a kind of cover for the soil to avoid evaporation
    and transpiration. These methods include mulching,
    manuring, potholing, tied ridging and crop rotation.

    Mulching

    Mulching is a process of
    covering the soil in order to
    keep moisture in the soil
    and to provide favourable
    conditions for plant growth.
    The materials that can be
    used for mulching are leaf
    mold, grass, manure, hay
    and wood shavings. The major advantage of mulching is that
    it prevents water from evaporating into the atmosphere but
    there are many other advantages like:
    • Helps weed control.
    • Protects plant roots from the cold winter helps to
    prevent soil erosion.
    • allows for early germination of seeds as it
    enhances soil temperature.

    manuring:
    Adding organic matter to the soil helps improve soil
    quality. Improved soil quality means better water
    retention in the soil. Water retention is the amount of
    water the soil can hold. Manuring also helps to reduce
    runoff and improves water infiltration. Infiltration is the
    process of water sinking into the ground.

    potholing :

    potholing is a system in agriculture with farmers till only


    where the crops have been planted. The farmer only
    waters and cultivates the area around the plants only.
    Potholing traps water in the hole, which will then hold
    moisture and assist plants to grow. Potholing is a very
    cheap water conservation method and each pothole
    remains fertile for about three years reducing fertilizer
    costs.

    tied ridging or Contour ridging:

    Tide ridging involves making soil heaps. These heaps are


    called ridges. These ridges can be 15cm to 20cm high. The
    ridges are made using hoes or ploughs. Crops are then grown
    on top of the ridges. This is done across a steep sloping area
    in order to trap fast moving water. Tide ridging helps reduce
    the loss of water and soil from being arable lands. One of the
    places in Zimbabwe where tied ridging is practiced is
    Domboshava.
    Crop rotation:
    Growing different types of crops every season helps
    improve soil structure and the water holding capacity of
    the soil. For example, in one season a farmer can grow
    tomatoes grow tomatoes which are deep rooted and
    need to be watered less frequently and, in another
    season, onions, that are shallow rooted and need to be
    watered frequently. Plants draw water from different
    depth levels within the soil. In this case the onions will
    use the unused soil moisture left from the tomatoes.
    Crop rotation may also improve soil fertility and help
    control pests and diseases.

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