Abstract:
Municipal Garbage (MG) as a plant nutrient supply was evaluated. Some of the garbage was collected from Hail city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The garbage was fermented partially after removing its contents of stones and metals. Lettuce plants were transplanted in five greenhouse pot experiments. In the first, a portion of the MG was mixed with a sandy soil at either 1, 2 or 3% before the transplanting. In the second, a portion of the MG was mixed with hydrochloric acid 0.1 Nat ratio of 1:2 for 15 days then extracted. The solid extracted portion was mixed with the sandy soil at 1, 2 , or 3%. A week after lettuce transplanting, a foliar spray technique was used to spray the HCl extract. In third and fourth experiments, the Coca Cola and the distilled water as extractants were used similarly to the second experiment. The fifth experiment was fertilized using the conventional rate of NPK fertilization ( control)). The lettuce plants were harvested after two months from the experiment initiation then soil pH and total soluble salts were determined in 1:2.5 soil water extract. The pH and total soluble salt values among the treatments were not significant. Growth parameters such as the total fresh weight, shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight and the dry matter percentage were determined. The results of the former three parameters increased as the rate of MG increased under the condition of the first four experiments. In addition, these parameters were great under the MG experiments in comparison to the control experiment. The dry matter percentages using 2% rate of MG were the greatest under all experiments except the Coca Cola experiment. This percentages increased as the rate of MG increased under the Coca Cola experiment condition. All of the growth parameters were the greatest under the condition of distilled water experiment among all of the experiments. The results of the study encourage using the water extract of MG as a source for plant nutrients and the extracted portion as a soil conditioner.
K.N. Al-Redhaiman , I.N. Nassar and I.S. Al-Salamah , 2003. Effect of the Municipal Garbage on the Growth of Lettuce. Asian Journal of Plant Sciences, 2: 731-737.
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