THE REACTION OF VARIOUS VEGETABLE CROPS ON ORGANIC OR MINERAL FERTILIZATION BASED ON EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS IN THE YEARS 1922–1969

The Research Institute of Vegetable Crops has been conducting experiments initiated in 1922 by Prof. dr. Felix Kotowski, which was planned then to answer a question concerning the choice of vegetables which must be grown with manure fertilization as opposed to those which can be fertilized with mineral fertilizers.

One can have some critical objections about the experiment which was initiated almost half a century ago, as to the methods of laying out such a kind of a field work; the arrangement of plots in all blocks is systhematic, not randomized, there are no isolation strips between the neighbouring plots and the experiment does not have "the Zero" treatment, i.e., plots without any fertilization. One could also say, that today we do not use organic fertilizers alone, or mineral fertilizers alone, but in most cases combined organo-mineral fertilization is used. In this experiment it is apparent in the case of cultures grown in rotation with the application of manure fertilization alone. Obviously today even after the application of 60 tons of manure per ha, nobody grows the crops for three years in succession without additional mineral fertilization. The conversion of the fertilizing value of manure into the mineral fertilizers equivalent is also open to discussion. The conversion ratio is based on the average figures from literature and not on the chemical analysis.