The Effectiveness of Composted Green Waste Amended with Vermiculite and Humic Acid Powders as an Alternative Cultivation Substrate for Cornflower Cultivation

ABSTRACT

Green waste (GW) is gradually increasing with the rapid development of urban greening and China’s flower industry. Using composted green waste (CGW) as acultivation substrate can effectively save peat resources to achieve environment-friendly and sustainable development.

This study improved the physical and chemical properties of CGW by adding different proportions of vermiculite and humic acid powders to CGW and used the improved CGW as acornflower cultivation substrate. In this experiment, the single-factor analysis of variance, the multiple comparisons, and the orthogonal test multi-index matrix analysis were used to analyze cornflowers’ growth indicators in different treatments. The main indicators were cornflower biomass, leaf nutrient content, and leaf pigment content. Through the comprehensive matrix analysis of the above indicators, it was concluded that the total weight of different treatments was T5> T8> T6> T4> T9> T7> T2> T3> T1. The test results showed that the growth status of cornflowers treated with T2~ T9 was better than that of T1 treatment. It is feasible to improve CGW using vermiculite and humic acid powders and to use the improved CGW for cornflower cultivation. The addition of vermiculite and humic acid powder together in cornflower cultivation was more effective than the single addition of vermiculite or humic acid powders cultivation substrate. The results of this study not only provided insight into the improvement of CGW, but also offered an alternative substrate for cultivating high-quality cornflowers, which had ecological and economic values.

KEYWORDS:

• Compost products
• vermiculite
• humic acid
• cornflower

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.31700537).

Formatting of funding sources

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.