Land of Volcanic Ash
With Biological Organic Fertilizer ULTRA GEN
Post Kelud and Sinabung eruption, what to do?
In the short term, the impact of volcanic ash is bad for the environment. But in the long term, volcanic ash has benefits for human life, especially in agriculture.
Volcanic ash has a bad impact in the short term because early exit from the crater of the volcano, this material has chemical properties that will reduce soil fertility. Volcanic ash had higher levels of acidity (pH) of about 4 to 4.3. With acidity levels, soil affected by volcanic ash would have levels of acidity (pH) of the soil 5 to 5.5. Though normally a soil is fertile when has the acidity (pH) of 6-7. Decrease of acidity (pH) of this land will contribute to a reduction in soil fertility and land productivity will decline. In the short term volcanic ash can repel insect pests or weeds that used to be the enemy of farmers. This is because, the living creatures can not live in an atmosphere too acidic, so the creature’s population will decrease. But unfortunately microbial soil fertility also died because of the highly acidic conditions.
In the long term, volcanic ash is able to provide a very positive impact for soil productivity improvement. When the acidity of volcanic ash has to be normalized by natural processes or with human assistance using dolomite or calcification (CaCO3) as a neutralizer, the mineral content stored in the volcanic ash would be an excellent natural fertilizer for the growth of agricultural crops. By using fast neutron activity analysis methods (AANC) to sample volcanic ash, the quantitative data obtained over the content of minerals contained in the volcanic ash samples. There are four main minerals contained in the volcanic ash, including: Iron (Fe), aluminum (Al), magnesium (Mg), silica (Si). These four minerals are nutrients that can help fertilize the plants.
However, the thickness of the dust covering the surface of the soil is an important factor in determining the speed of re-use of dust-covered ground. For the thickness of the thin dust, less than 1 cm can be lost quickly when it rains. Thickness of 1 cm to 4 cm can be lost by processing using a hoe and a thickness of between 5-10 cm can be lost when the processing is done mechanically ground using a tractor. For dust thickness reaches 40 cm or more requires a long time, so that the land can be reused for planting, waiting for a process of weathering and decomposition of dust.
How can the land affected by the volcanic ash quickly returned fertile??
To process of Land Volcanic Ash The solution is to be quickly expanded microbes in the soil. UltraGen Biological fertilizer containing microbes are able to adapt and excel breed in the highly acidic environment (pH 3-4). Therefore Fertilizer Ultra Gen highly recommended to rehabilitate land affected by volcano ash. If the land affected by the volcanic ash at least 10 cm thick, then that should be done is as follows :
- Perform cultivation with tractor mechanization.
- Sprinkle Biological Fertilizer UltraGen to all land that is useful to accelerate the decomposition of volcanic ash that is available to plants.
- Immediately though again the land with a tractor mechanization after flushing with Fertilizer Ultra Gen.
- Then left for 2-4 weeks. The new planting can be done after the rainfall / watering.