Alley cropping may prove useful in the southeast U.S., providing multiple products and income streams, as well as affording sustainable land use alternatives to conventional farming and forest planting. Such systems in this region are of particular interest because they can help in soil conservation and nutrient retention and aid in sustaining and improving valued but degraded farmland. In the current study triple row single-species strips of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and cherrybark oak (Quercus pagoda) were planted as 1-year-old seedlings separated by 12 or 24 m wide areas of soybean in spring 2007. Select individual tree seedlings of each species were treated with on-farm wastes, used as mulch in a circular area around each stem. These waste/mulches were hog bedding (corn stover + hog waste removed from swine houses), old hay (year-old rolled/slightly spoiled bermudagrass hay - Cynodon dactylon) and black plastic bedding film. After the first season of growth with the applied mulches, tree seedling growth rates were higher for cherrybark oak and longleaf pine seedlings mulched with old hay applied at 7.5 cm deep in 30 cm radius around each seedling. Other mulches had varying effects on soil conditions, but no significant impact on tree growth as compared to the untreated control seedlings. These first-year findings suggest that mulching with specific on-farm wastes may be a valuable management tool in temperate alley cropping systems. Longer term tree growth in this system and with regard to these initial mulching treatments will be studied.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-03252009-104003 |
| Date | 15 April 2009 |
| Creators | Stevenson, Hayley Diana |
| Contributors | Paul Mueller, Fred Cubbage, Dan Robison |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03252009-104003/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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