Cantina Fratelli Dorigati

Organic fertilization: Treaty on the manure

  • 11
    Jan
    2013

    Organic fertilization: Treaty on the manure

    Fertilization is always a touchy subject when it comes to quality viticulture. In fact fertilization in a vineyard is required, only for the fact that each year by removing the production of grapes from the countryside asportiamo a certain amount of nitrogen, potassium, etc. ...
    Should therefore be replenished every year this deficit of macro and micro elements in the soil. Fertilize every year but is likely to be due to excessive vigor, caused by high amounts of nitrogen. Too much vigor at the expense of the quality of the grapes of means, and then negative. We therefore prefer to fertilize every 3/4 years to get the right balance. In some vineyards of the Rotaliana plain not fertilize even more than twenty years, due to the high fertility of the soil and cause fertilization exceptional 70s.
    That said, however, remains the question of what kind of fertilizer to use. Mineral (synthetic) or organic (manure slurry or cattle). As already said many times we are not organic or biodynamic farm, but despite this we are very attentive to the need of our land and environmental protection vineyard, not that balance human-earth-plant.
    Therefore choose to use natural organic fertilizers, for two reasons: the first is that they are in our area thanks to the stables and veal, and second, because they represent a fertility at 360 degrees, can not be reproduced by chemical synthesis.
    Just today we fertilized with manure our vineyard Rebo in Ischia: a system with screws very young and very poor gravelly soil. The manure brings many microelements and macroelements in many balance between them, allowing a slow release. Moreover also has properties soil improvers, or being rich in organic substance retains water and moisture in the soil making it more easily available to the roots.
    Vineyards in production use slurry, which is similar to manure as a result, but no capacity soil.
    Both the manure, but more importantly, the slurry must be sufficiently mature. This means that they must stand for a long period for umificare the organic substance present in them. The manure we used today was matured for 16 months (almost Wine), and it appeared like topsoil, peat. Quality Index of the manure are the myriad of earthworms present in it.
    On the left you can see some photos of fertilization.