The old lady Ma Guilan's request naturally had to be done immediately. Meng Decai immediately organized two hundred farmers who were skilled in farming and honest and willing to work when they returned to build houses according to Ma Guilan's instructions. At the same time, Kong Shouzhen allocated special funds to purchase needed materials.

Farm tools, cattle, and women!

With more people and strength, a small village was soon built by the Nandu River. Ma Guilan specially hired a carpenter to make a big plaque with the words Dongfanghong Agricultural School on it! Then he hung the plaque high and also made

Two couplets, on the left is as long as the mind does not slip, and on the right is there are always more solutions than problems! Seeing familiar words and familiar words, Ma Guilan even feels like she is in that fiery era again!

This time, Ma Guilan planned to cultivate 200 acres of land to build her own experimental field. Of course, 200 people planting 200 acres of land would be a waste of resources, but Ma Guilan needed to improve the soil first, which required manpower.

On the first day, Ma Guilan first surrounded the 200 acres of selected land with ridges, and then divided it into 20 small pieces. After all was completed, he began to dig out the river mouth and release water to soak the land. This step took a day, and the river water could remove the salt in the soil.

The alkali washes away and also brings the sediment in the river. After the river is drained, the next step is to transform the soil.

There are several ways to improve saline-alkali land in later generations, including water conservancy improvement, agricultural technology improvement, biological improvement and chemical improvement. Among them, biological improvement is the most time-consuming, and chemical improvement is basically impossible to achieve now, so Ma Guilan used a combination of water conservancy improvement and agricultural technology improvement.

.

Water conservancy improvement is very simple, that is, using a large amount of fresh water for flushing. However, this method can easily cause land desertification. In addition, the salinization of the land along the Nandu River is not serious, so Ma Guilan ordered the farmers to soak the land again and it was done. Next

The first step is to use agricultural technology to start improving.

Agricultural technology is more complicated. You can improve soil composition and structure, enhance soil permeability, and accelerate salt leaching through deep plowing, leveling the land, filling with soil, covering grass, plowing silt, covering sand, adding organic fertilizers, etc. Ma Guilan

The salinity of the 200 acres of land selected was not serious, and it was almost gone through blistering, so Ma Guilan decided to improve the soil through deep plowing, silt digging, and the application of more organic fertilizers.

Ma Guilan sent 100 people to plow the land, and she took the remaining 100 people to start producing organic fertilizer. There were more than 20,000 people in the refugee camps. Naturally, these things cannot be wasted. Ma Guilan took the 100 people with her to produce organic fertilizer.

, together with the help of Tiandihui, they cleaned up the inside and outside of the refugee camp in three days. In addition to collecting and storing excrement, they also cleaned up a large amount of domestic garbage, such as weeds, silt, and dead animal carcasses.

etc.

These things were transported to the newly established agricultural school. At this time, a large pit with a radius of more than 100 meters had been dug beside the experimental field. The pit was one meter deep, and the bottom was manually tamped with wooden piles to prevent

The leakage became a floor drain.

Ma Guilan gathered 200 farmers together. These farmers didn't know what the old lady was digging such a big hole for. They were all whispering. Did the old lady want to bury all this garbage? But burying it outside the refugee camp would be fine.

Yes, did you still bother to drag me here?

While everyone was watching, Ma Guilan held up a loudspeaker and said: "Everyone, I will teach you how to compost today!"

this

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page)

These people are all experienced farmers and are good at farming. When the old lady wanted to teach them how to compost, a farmer in his thirties smiled and said: "Old lady, we all know how to compost, but if you dig such a big hole, the middle

Don’t you want it to be a mess?”

Compost uses high temperatures to ferment organic matter. If the pit is too large and the temperature is too high, the organic matter in the center will ferment too quickly and become a pile of mud, completely losing its fertility.

Ma Guilan smiled and said: "Of course you can't just ferment human and animal manure. What I'm teaching you today is how to use other organic matter to increase the effectiveness of fertilizer!"

These farmers immediately didn’t understand, what is organic matter?

Ma Guilan had no choice but to explain one by one. Organic matter is a compound containing carbon. Unexpectedly, the more she explained, the more confusing she became. The farmers asked what is carbon? What is a compound? In the end, Ma Guilan had to let them memorize by rote, as long as they remember

Just the steps for composting!

More than 200 people were noisy for a long time before finally calming down. Ma Guilan first had four ventilation trenches dug at the bottom to ventilate the fertilizer. Otherwise, it would easily turn into mud due to high temperatures for a long time. Then at the end of the

A layer of straw is laid on the bottom layer, and a layer of human and animal excrement is spread on the straw. If the land is acidic, a little lime water should be sprinkled on the excrement, but the land here is saline-alkali land, so it is naturally not necessary to add artificial neutralizers.

Start by spreading a layer of sand on top of human and animal excrement, then add a layer of domestic garbage, if there is no kitchen waste, grass, straw, or dried aquatic weeds can be used. Finally, spread a layer of sand on top and compact it, so that a layer

The compost is considered complete. If the pit is dug big enough, a layer can be laid on top according to the pattern of the bottom layer. The large pit for this test is one meter deep, so Ma Guilan had three layers laid, and the compost pile is half a height above the ground.

rice.

Each layer of compost needs to be well fed, drunk, and tightly covered. The so-called "full" means that weeds and other human and animal manure and urea soil miscellaneous fertilizers and silt sand that adjust the carbon-nitrogen ratio must be added in the required amount to ensure composting.

quality.

Drinking enough means that each layer of fertilizer must be soaked with water. Adding enough water is the key to composting.

To cover it tightly means to pile it up and then seal it with soil, which can preserve heat and water. It is piled up layer by layer until it is 4-6 feet high. Each layer is extremely thick, usually 1-2 feet, and the upper layer should be thin.

, the middle and lower layers are slightly thicker, the amount of manure fertilizer and water added to each layer should be more in the upper layer and less in the lower layer, so that it can flow down the river and be evenly distributed up and down.

The width and length of the pile can be determined by the amount of materials available and the convenience of operation. The shape of the pile can be made into a steamed bun shape or other shapes. After the pile is completed, it should be sealed with 2 inches of thin mud, fine soil, and straw curtains to facilitate heat preservation.

, retain water and fertilizer. Then open annular ditches around it to facilitate drainage.

Such a large dung pile weighed about two thousand kilograms. Although it looked like a lot, there were still tons of garbage and excrement collected from the homeless camps. Ma Guilan saw that there was a lot of fertilizer left, and immediately ordered people to start building four more similar dung piles.

Heap, then all the garbage is used up.

Generally, 3-5 days after heaping, organic matter begins to be decomposed by microorganisms to release heat, and the temperature in the heap rises slowly. After 7-8 days, the temperature in the heap rises significantly, reaching 60-70°C. High temperatures can easily cause a lack of moisture in the heap, causing microorganisms to

The activity is weakened and the decomposition of raw materials is incomplete. Therefore, during the stacking period, the moisture and temperature changes in the upper, middle and lower parts of the stack should be frequently checked.

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page)

In later generations, compost thermometers were used to check the temperature, but there were no compost thermometers at that time. However, thermometers were not popular at the time when Ma Guilan studied, so she learned a simple method from her teacher, which was to insert a long iron rod into the pile.

, after leaving it for 5 minutes, pull it out and touch it with your hands. Your hands will feel warm about 30℃, hot around 40-50℃, and hot above 60℃.

To check the moisture, you can observe the dry and wet conditions on the surface of the part where the iron rod is inserted. If it is wet, it means there is an appropriate amount of water; if it is dry, it means there is too little water. You can drill a hole on the top of the pile and add water. If there is moisture in the pile, ventilation will adapt.

Generally, the temperature gradually rises in the first few days after heaping, and can reach the highest level in about a week. The high temperature stage must be maintained for no less than 3 days, and the temperature slowly decreases after 10 days.

During this period, there was nothing going on at the agricultural school, so Ma Guilan divided the two hundred farmers into four classes and started giving them literacy classes every night. Through what happened during the day, Ma Guilan discovered that if these farmers were not taught how to read, their agricultural school would basically

It could not develop, so during this period Ma Guilan also became a voluntary literacy worker, teaching these farmers how to read at night.

The temperature in Hainan at this time is very high, and the fertilizer has almost fermented after 10 days. The maturity of the compost is a comprehensive indicator to identify the quality of the compost. It can be based on its color, smell, straw hardness, compost leachate, and humification coefficient

Judging from the color and smell, the decomposed straw of compost turns brown or dark brown, has black juice, and smells of ammonia. When holding the compost with your hands, it will be soft and elastic when warm, but brittle and easily broken when dry.

Organic matter loses its elasticity.

On the day when the seal was unsealed, Ma Guilan brought all the students out. When these old farmers saw the dark and shiny humus inside after the seal was removed, they all sighed that Ma Guilan was so awesome.

A few days ago, these farmer students didn't take Ma Guilan's scientific composting seriously. They thought that Ma Guilan was an old lady. She didn't know much about farm work. She just wanted to exercise after eating too much. But today, the reality in front of them slapped her in the face.

, they can’t produce this kind of good farmyard fertilizer.

Some people also think that the success of this compost pile is just accidental, and other compost piles may not be so successful. However, when the sealing soil of other compost piles is removed, they are all the same as this compost pile, and they are all black humus soil.

Seeing that she had successfully composted, Ma Guilan held up a loudspeaker and said: "Everyone has seen it, as long as you are willing to study with me seriously, I will teach you all the farming skills, including how to increase production, how to graft, etc.!

"

Now these farmers believed in Ma Guilan, and they all knelt on the ground and said, "Master, please teach us how to farm!"

Although farming is not a big skill, it is indeed the means for these farmers to make a living. Now that someone is willing to hand over their unique skills to them, these farmers are naturally grateful to Ma Guilan from the bottom of their hearts.

Now that the fertilizer is available, the experimental fields there have been renovated. The next step is to put a thick layer of farm manure under the experimental fields to serve as base fertilizer, and then put a layer of sandy soil five centimeters thick on top, so that crops can be grown on the renovated saline-alkali land.

(In reality, it takes two or three years to improve saline-alkali land, and composting takes a month. Just watch it for fun, don’t take it seriously!)

(End of chapter)
Chapter completed!