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Sunflowers for extra organic matter
Since 2019, sunflowers have been allowed in a mixture of catch crops for the Ecological Focus Area (EA). That's good news: sunflowers are not only very beautiful, but they also provide an enormous amount of organic matter.
That's because the sunflower (like corn) is a C4 plant. This plant has a different process of photosynthesis than C3 plants, which most other green manures belong to. In C3 plants, 20% to 50% of the bound carbon can be lost during photosynthesis, especially at high temperatures. C4 plants grow much faster and use water, nutrients and light much more efficiently.
Benefits of sunflowers
Stimulating biodiversity in the arable landscape will be high on the agenda in 2019. Flowering green manures provide the perfect habitat for insects (such as bees, bumblebees and flies). This means that a green manure mixture makes a major contribution to maintaining the native insect population.
The benefits of sunflowers as a green manure
During the cultivation period for green manures, we have had to deal with higher temperatures and little moisture in recent years. Sunflowers are not bothered by this and develop quickly. Furthermore, the benefits of sunflowers as a green manure are:
- intensive rooting,
- Provides a lot of organic matter,
- strong frost sensitivity,
- Low sowing costs,
- Very high success rate,
- beautiful appearance,
- Food source for insects and field birds.
LG Orgamax with 50% sunflower
In the range of green manure fertilizers this year the LG ORGAMAX renewed. This is composed of 50% sunflowers, 25% yellow mustard and 25% Japanese oats. The greening mixture provides a hefty organic matter yield (up to 5.000 kilos per hectare, with a favorable C/N ratio), intensive rooting in various soil layers and offers a beautiful living environment for field birds in autumn and winter. Read more about LG ORGAMAX here.
