Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/843/en

In the case of cereals, stem elongation puts an end to skin tillage. With root crops and field vegetable cultures it extends into early summer. These require — potatoes, for instance — a continued weeder-harrow, earthing-up, and hoeing work until the rows close. A deep intervention in the soil in spring with rotary cultivator, grubber, or even plough must be carefully weighed against its consequences. It ordinarily means, at first, a turbulent loss of soil fertility that cannot be directed or used by the freshly sown plants. The necessity for such deeper-reaching cultivation arises in arable farming after winter cover crops, winter-kill damage, and forced couch-grass control. The consequence of this untimely deeper intervention means loss of humus and loss of winter moisture, which frequently draws in its wake the necessity for irrigation. In horticulture a special situation prevails in this regard. As a result of the succession of consecutive crops, the soil must — regardless of season — be worked more deeply for re-sowing, and must, on account of the rapid development of the vegetatively fruiting crops, be kept throughout the year in a more spring-like condition. A higher humus turnover is therefore unavoidably the consequence.