I have incorporated fresh garlic stalk into replanted soil in pot experiment examining cucumber growth and soil quality. Before application tested the soil and garlic residue properties. we found 444.43 C:N ratio of garlic stalk. can you recommend as good quality crop residue? and more explanation at that CN ratio.
Very interesting question indeed. Any organic residue of such high C:N ratio will not be able to benefit cucumber, especially in a pot experiment, but surely it will aid in improving the physical properties of the treated soil. Release of nutrients in from organic residues can be accelerated by adding some nitrogen to narrow down C:N ratio.Unless C: N ratio buffers around 20-30:1, direct implications of organic residues on changes in soil fertility will be difficult to be realised in such short duration crops.Residual effect of such residues will be increasingly felt. Soil properties and their baseline microbial diversity also play important role in release of nutrients through such crop residues...
http://www.advancecovercrops.com/understanding-the-carbon-nitrogen-ratio-cn/
Organic residue with C:N ratio > 15-20:1 may not improve the soil quality in terms of nutrient availability. There is little or no possibility of this incorporated organic residue to get decomposed in the pots. Thus, narrowing down of high C:N ratio of garlic stalk with organic or inorganic nitrogen source is essential to harvest the benefit of higher nutrient availability. Microbial flora responsible for decomposition/ conversion of complex form of C, N and P present in residue to simple and plant available from require nitrogen for their own cell synthesis and the same may be taken from soil thereby reducing its availability. It is advisable to use the composted garlic stalk.
Dr. Sunita is absolutely right. As your garlic straw during the crop growth period is no use due to its very wide C:N ratio, you have to either narrowed down the C:N ratio at least below 30:1, otherwise you may find immobilization of your soil available nutrients . I suggest dont add garlic straw in your pot experiments as such.
Thank so much to all for your valuable suggestion. As for concern to high CN ratio of galic stalk, so what should i do to narrow down it? what is the best proportion of CN? Second is that garlic stalk have high organic C (TOC: 390.54 g/kg). could we assume that my applied garlic stalk enrich with OM and useful for soil quality. before earlier, we tested garlic stalk which improved the plant growth and soil indexes for cucumber.
There are no chances of garlic stalks to get decomposed in pots soil. to narrow down CN ratio you can add some N treatments as a factor too. Moreover, garlic stalks also have inhibitory or stimulatory allelopathic effects on successive vegetables. you can also monitor that.
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