Soil Fertility from Non-Commercial Nutrient Sources

All essential plant nutrients cycle through the ecosystem of soil, water, air, plant, microbe, and animal.  Agronomic information about the composition and beneficial use of waste materials and how the nutrients can be recycled can help growers reduce the need to purchase soil fertility inputs.  Many different types of non-commercial nutrient sources are available in New Jersey.  Examples include horse manure with bedding, shade tree leaves, lawn clippings, wood chips, food waste, coffee grounds, eggshells, wood ash and more.

With 43,000 horses in New Jersey, there is an abundance of horse manure produced.  One horse can produce about 65 pounds of manure plus bedding per day.  The quantity of horse manure is substantial on a statewide basis.  Unfortunately, sometimes horse manure goes to landfills when it should be used to build and sustain soil fertility.

The Soil Profile Newsletter 2023 issue posted at Rutgers NJAES explains how to build and maintain soil fertility harnessing the nutrient supplying ability of horse manure and many other types of non-commercial materials.  The chemical composition and soil fertility value of each material is presented for beneficial use.  Available on the web at Rutgers NJAES ‘The Soil Profile’: https://njaes.rutgers.edu/soil-profile/pdfs/sp-v28.pdf

Nutrient Management for Christmas Trees

Joseph Heckman, Extension Soil Fertility

Whatever the crop, soil testing and record keeping are guides to sustainable soil fertility and nutrient management.  When soil tests levels are low, Christmas tree growers should attempt to build soil fertility levels into the optimum range.  And once that goal has been achieved, growers should focus on maintaining soil test levels in the optimum range.

This practice requires information on balancing fertilizer amendments with crop nutrient removal.  In the case Christmas Trees, this means nutrients associated with harvest of cut trees.  Rutgers NJAES has this type of data already built into an extension fact sheet: Soil Fertility Recommendations for Christmas Trees   https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1187/

For nutrient management purposes it is useful to know what a harvested or cut Christmas Tree removes from the soil.  On average, a harvest of 100 cut Christmas Trees contains 29 lb. Nitrogen, 3 lb. Phosphorus, 8 lb. Potassium, 12 lb. Calcium, 2 lb. Magnesium, and 1 lb. Sulfur.

An average fresh cut Christmas Tree that is 92 inches tall may be expected to have a fresh weight of about 48.5 lb.  Water typically makes up about 54% of a fresh cut tree weight.  Thus, on a dry basis a cut tree would have a weight of about 22.4 lb.

Tree recycling and mulch making are now common in many communities.  If the trees are shredded the nutrient content data above can be used to estimate the nutrient density of the resulting wood chips.

Reference:

Zinati, G., J.R. Heckman, and M. Vodak. 2016. Nutrient Removal by Christmas Tree Harvest. Journal Plant Nutrition. 39: 1506-1512.