Li An told the people of the Zhan Clan that although sweet potatoes did not require much fertilizer and could grow normally in barren land, it did not mean that they did not need to be fertilized. The presence or absence of fertilizers would make a huge difference in the growth and growth of sweet potatoes. Without fertilizers, the sweet potatoes would grow smaller, but with fertilizers, the sweet potatoes would grow larger. The yield per mu would greatly exceed that of land without fertilizers. Even a difference of four to five times in yield was a common occurrence.
In a special era, some people would plant sweet potatoes in experimental fields full of fertilizer for their own political achievements. The amount of fertilizer in this experimental field was beyond imagination. It could be said that the entire experimental field was filled with fertilizer, and the soil was almost invisible. Such an excessive amount of fertilizer could naturally ensure the rapid growth of sweet potatoes. Therefore, in such experimental fields, the yield of sweet potatoes was very high, and the size was also very large. The yield of sweet potatoes in an experimental field was many times that of an ordinary field, which made many people who did not know the situation envious. In fact, it was just an exaggeration. Such an experimental field was really not representative and could not be promoted on a large scale. After all, the amount of fertilizer was limited. It was obviously too unrealistic to cover every mu of land with dozens of centimeters of fertilizer. The possibility of realization must be zero. No family had so much fertilizer!
In order to grow sweet potatoes well, the management of fertilizer must be paid attention to during the seedling stage. If more fertilizer was added to the soil during the seedling stage, then the sweet potato seedlings would be very strong. After being planted in the field, they would also grow faster, which was very beneficial to increasing the yield in the future.
The management of the sweet potato planting field was also very important. This could be explored slowly and could not be rushed. Before planting the sweet potato seedlings, some basic fertilizer should be added to the field, which was very beneficial to the growth of the sweet potato seedlings. In the later stage, appropriate topdressing could also be added to increase the yield of sweet potatoes.
"You must remember that sweet potatoes are most afraid of being flooded. You must not plant them in low-lying areas. Moreover, you must plant them in ridges. You must plant the sweet potato seedlings on the ridges. This way, even if the weather is cloudy and rainy, the sweet potato roots will not be drowned. The excess rainwater can also be discharged as soon as possible."
Ang Lee looked at a Zhan clansman and said.
"Oh, there are so many things to pay attention to when planting sweet potatoes! However, the yield of this thing is so high. Even if it is troublesome, we must plant it. "
The Zhan clansmen said.
Obviously, they were all people who were afraid of starvation. During a good year, they might be able to eat their fill, but once it was a disaster year, they would have to starve. At least, they couldn't eat whatever they wanted. It was definitely not good to live a half-empty life every day. Therefore, they had an almost obsessive desire for food. When they heard that there were high-yield crops, they were naturally especially interested.
In the field management of sweet potatoes, in addition to paying special attention to flooding, special attention should also be paid to the prevention and control of pests and diseases. Although sweet potatoes could not suffer from many pests and diseases, enough attention should still be paid because it was closely related to the yield. For example, pests and diseases would affect the yield of sweet potatoes.
For the planting of sweet potatoes in the future, once diseases were found, pesticides could be used to deal with them. However, in the Tang dynasty, pesticides were not available. The best way to find pests and diseases was to cut off the infected sweet potato leaves to prevent these leaves from passing the virus to other healthy leaves.
There were still a lot of pests that could threaten sweet potatoes, such as stem borer, heavenly moth, leaf roller, leaf beetle, small beetle, golden needle worm, scarab, mole cricket, ground tiger, littlemoon, aphids, whitefly, and so on. They were all pests that could eat sweet potatoes. Some liked to eat sweet potato leaves, while others liked to eat sweet potato tubers. As long as there were not many pests that ate sweet potato leaves and a few damaged sweet potato leaves, it was not a big deal and had little impact on the yield. However, if a lot of sweet potato leaves were eaten by pests, the consequences would be serious. If too many leaves were lost, the yield of sweet potatoes would be greatly reduced.
The most terrible pests were never the pests that ate sweet potato leaves, but the pests that ate sweet potato tubers. For example, the ground tiger, which was hated by the people in the future, was a pests that ate sweet potato tubers. The tubers that were eaten by the ground tiger would have a lot of ugly scars, which would greatly affect the yield of sweet potatoes. At the same time, it would also greatly affect the marketability of sweet potatoes. People who bought sweet potatoes would definitely not be willing to buy sweet potatoes full of scars. They would definitely prefer a sweet potato with a smooth surface that was intact.
Scars on the tubers of sweet potatoes were light. If it was more serious, it was very likely that the whole sweet potato would wither. For example, if the tubers were eaten whole, the sweet potato sprouts and sweet potato roots would be broken. After the sweet potato sprouts were exposed to the sun, they would definitely die.
These ground tigers looked very much like caterpillars. In other words, they were caterpillars that lived underground. However, these caterpillars would not always live underground. When they grew up, they would leave the ground and take off their caterpillar coat, turning themselves into moths that could fly.
In other words, ground tigers were the larvae of moths. Therefore, even if you killed all the ground tigers in a piece of land, it would be useless. This was because a group of moths could fly in from a distance at any time. These moths could easily lay their eggs in the sweet potato field, and thus, the sweet potato field would have ground tigers again.
The title of tiger was not just for show. Being able to give a caterpillar the name of ground tiger to the underground caterpillars was enough to show how harmful these pests were to plants. Sweet potatoes were not the only food of ground tigers. Almost all the underground tubers and fruits were food of ground tigers, peanuts and potatoes were no exception.
In addition to the roots of these exotic plants, the roots of many native plants in the Tang Dynasty were also damaged by ground tigers. Almost all the roots of plants would be damaged by ground tigers. Ground tigers fed on the roots of plants. The more swollen and nutritious the roots were, the more they liked them. In the past, there were ground tigers in the Tang Dynasty who could only eat some dried roots. However, since the introduction of the exotic tubers such as sweet potatoes and potatoes into the Tang Dynasty, the diet of ground tigers suddenly became much richer. Moreover, they were all delicious delicacies. In places where there were sweet potatoes and potatoes, ground tigers would usually prioritize eating them. They were not interested in grass roots and other dried roots.
Therefore, the nature of ground tigers was also cleverly used by human beings. For example, later farmers knew that ground tigers liked to eat sweet potatoes and potatoes, so they would bury some potatoes and sweet potatoes in the precious ginseng fields to protect the precious ginseng and at the same time, lure the abominable ground tigers to kill them.
The operation was also very simple. It was to bury a potato or sweet potato the size of an egg near the root of the ginseng and insert a branch above it in advance so that it was easy to pull out the potato and kill the ground tiger.
After the potato was buried in the soil for a period of time, if there was a ground tiger nearby, it would gnaw on the potato and drill into the meat of the potato. At this time, it only needed to lift the branch above it to pull out the whole potato. Naturally, the ground tiger that drilled into the potato would also be lifted up, so it could be easily killed. Wasn't this a proper trap? Due to the protection of the potato, the root of the ginseng would not be damaged by the ground tiger and could grow very well. Therefore, the loss of the farmers would not be greatly reduced.
Ang Lee felt that this behavior was not much different from fishing. Fishing was done with bait, but catching ground tigers with sweet potatoes and potatoes could be done successfully. Moreover, Ang Lee felt that it was easier to catch ground tigers. As long as there were ground tigers in the field, he could catch them all. Not a single ground tiger could escape. Just thinking about it made him feel very satisfied.
Of course, there were many ways to deal with ground tigers. In addition to this method of fishing, there were more and better ways that could fundamentally reduce the number of ground tigers. For example, the method of killing moths by bonfire was a very effective method.
Because ground tigers were the larvae of moths, if the sky was full of moths, there would definitely be a lot of ground tigers. Even if you used the method of fishing to clean up all the ground tigers in the soil, the moths in the sky would quickly lay eggs in the soil. It would not be long before there would be a lot of ground tigers running rampant in the field. Therefore, the wiser way was to use a simpler method to directly eliminate the moths flying around in the sky.
Moths also had a fatal flaw, which was that they liked to throw themselves into the fire. The saying of moths throwing themselves into the fire was not nonsense. At night, when a bonfire was lit in the wild, a group of moths would inevitably fly over and be burned alive by the fire, directly burned into a pile of ashes.
Some people may have doubts, wondering if the moths were stupid. Why would they throw themselves into the fire? Did the moths not know that they would be burned to death?
That was right, the moths really did not know. Just like when moths were young and were caught by potato pieces, would they know that this was a trap?
There was an authoritative scientific explanation about moths throwing themselves into the fire. According to the scientific explanation of later generations, hundreds of millions of years ago, there was no artificial fire. Moths were completely guided by natural light sources, such as sunlight, moonlight, or starlight. Because the sun, moon, and stars were very far from the earth, the light they emitted or reflected could be regarded as parallel lines. When a moth flew in a straight line, the angle between its direction and the light at any position was a fixed value.
However, if the light sources were very close, such as torches or candles, and the light they emitted could no longer be regarded as parallel lights, the moth would fly according to its inherent habit. The route it flew out was not a straight line, but an isometric spiral or logarithmic spiral that kept turning toward the light source. It kept getting closer to the light source and finally died in the fire. That was to say, the moth was deceived by artificial light and unknowingly lost its life.
When Ang Lee was a child, his family often went to the field at night to set up a bonfire and made the fire very strong. Then, they watched the moths throw themselves into the bonfire and turn into ashes. Although it was a little cruel, moths were pests and their larvae were terrible ground tigers. In order to reduce the number of ground tigers as much as possible, they could only kill them.
Because the environment of the Tang dynasty was different from that of later generations, the specific situation of this era was needed to judge the prevention of pests and pests of plants. Even the prevention measures in different areas were different. For example, some areas had one kind of pests, while other areas had another kind of pests. Different types of pests could lead to different measures.
In the Tang dynasty, when pesticides had not been invented, the means to fight against pests were limited. The measures that could be taken were extremely limited. Sometimes, there was even a situation where people were powerless to fight back.
For example, in ancient times, there would often be terrible locust plagues. Once a terrible locust plague broke out, the people had no ability to fight back at all. Thousands of acres of fertile land would soon be eaten up by locusts, and the people would have nothing. Then, there would be a terrible disaster year.
In ancient times, the frequency of locust plagues was very high. Every time, the loss was extremely heavy. Many people regarded it as a natural disaster. Then, they burned all kinds of incense and prayed to Buddha, hoping that the locust plague would disappear. But how could the locust plague disappear so easily? Praying to God was useless.
In fact, the most reliable way to fight against the locust plague was to raise a large number of chickens and ducks. Chickens and ducks liked to eat locusts. Moreover, locusts were very nutritious. The chickens and ducks that ate locusts laid eggs and the eggs' variety were good, and the speed of growth was also very fast. In short, there were too many benefits.
In the Tang dynasty, when there were no pesticides, the people should raise more chickens and ducks. When they found that the situation in the field was not right, they should quickly put the chickens and ducks in the field, and then let the chickens and ducks eliminate the swarms of locusts. Except for this, it was difficult to find a more suitable way.
Maybe there would be some difficulties in the implementation, but there was really no better way except to use a large number of chickens and ducks to eat locusts. This was probably the only effective way in ancient times.
Dozens of kilograms of mutton were quickly distributed. Even a full pot of mutton soup was not left. All of it was drunk. It could be seen how delicious it was.
After eating and drinking, everyone rested for a while. Then, they continued to search for prey in the primeval forest of Jie Mountain.
The forest of Jie Mountain was not very big, so there were not many kinds of prey in it. There were too few large prey. They were all small and medium-sized prey, especially small prey. None of the clansmen of the Zhan Clan who went hunting in the mountains returned empty-handed. At least, they would hunt a few hares and pheasants back. Especially the hares' reproductive ability was too strong, and there was a lot of grass on the mountain. For the hares, they had a lot of food. In the case of sufficient food, the hares' reproduction speed was naturally very fast. After a batch was killed by hunters, another batch would grow up immediately. Once the hares' density was low to a certain extent, hunting would become very difficult.
The Summit
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