Acapulco (Cassia Alata) Leaves and Chalk Dust as Soil Conditioner
Keywords:
soil, soil conditioner, Acapulco, mixture, growth rate, chalk dustAbstract
INTRODUCTION
Soil is an essential and very important factor of every organism in the planet. It plays a vital role not only to plants, but also to other parts of the whole ecosystem (Scottish natural heritage-Scotland living landscapes). Soil is beset by a number of problems. One of these problems is soil degradation. Soil conditioner is one of the most important things that farmers use and improves crop quality aside from the commonly used fertilizers. Like other kinds of soil amendments, it is applied to the soil for the improvement of its physical and chemical properties. It usually comes in the form of fermented semi-liquid substance or in powdered mixture of organic materials. An example of this is the Humate Soil Conditioner.
METHODS
Using the mortar and pestle, twenty Acapulco leaves were pounded until it was thoroughly crushed. After this, the leaves were set aside. Then, ten sticks of chalk were pounded, still using the mortar and pestle after which, the chalk dust was collected. After crushing the raw materials, it was mixed together, producing the soil conditioner.
RESULTS
The test resulted to 3.15, showing that there is a significant difference between the used samples. It is recommended to adjust the time and date of observation as well as recording the height to get more accurate measurements to get more reliable results.
DISCUSSIONS
The objective of this study is to produce a soil conditioner out of Acapulco (Cassia alata) leaves and chalk dust and to test its effectiveness to the subjected plant. The leaves of Acapulco and chalk dust were gathered and were pounded. Afterwards, it was blended with each other. The produced soil conditioner was then applied to set-up D, leaving the set-up A as the controlled set-up. in testing for its effectiveness, the height of the plants was recorded and compared to each other. The researcher used t-test for independent samples for statistical analysis.