Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7.1
Source separated
garden organics (i.e., grass
clippings and shrub prun-
ing's) ready for composting
at a commercial composting
facility, collected from sub-
urban 'green lid bin' kerbside
collections
Fig. 7.2
Source separated
green-waste compost ready
for distribution to farmers at
an urban composting facility
in south western Sydney
7.2
CROA Compost Field Experiment Design
The field trial was located at the NSW Department of Primary Industries 'Cen-
tre for Recycled Organics in Agriculture' (CROA) near Camden (150°42′32″E,
34°05′45.6″S), NSW, Australia, at a site with a long history of intensive cropping
prior to the experiment. The soil at the site was a Chromosol/Dermosol inter-grade
(Isbell
1996
) [Lixisol (FAO
2006
)] with topsoil which was hard-setting with low or-
ganic C levels and a silt-clay-loam texture and chemistry as presented in Table
7.1
.
The field trial design is outlined in detail in Chan et al. (
2008
). Briefly, it con-
sisted of seven treatments in a randomised complete block design with 4 replicates
of each treatment. The treatments were; T1 = high soil P and conventional farmer
practice (half poultry manure and half chemical fertilizer); T2 = high soil P and full
compost; T3 = high soil P and compost and chemical fertilizer (half:half); T4 = low
soil P and conventional farmer practice (half poultry manure and half chemical fer-
tilizer); T5 = low soil P and full compost; T6 = low soil P and compost and chemical
fertilizer (half:half); T7 = control (nil inputs).
