Monday, 28 April 2008

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus in 1773.
Acacias are also known as thorntrees or wattles, including the yellow-fever acacia and umbrella acacias. There are roughly 1300 species of Acacia worldwide, about 960 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas.

Organic horticulture

Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heritage-species preservation.
The Latin words hortus (garden plant) and cultura (culture) together form horticulture, classically defined as the culture or growing of garden plants. Horticulture is also sometimes defined simply as “agriculture minus the plough (or plow).” Instead of the plough, horticulture makes use of human labour and gardener’s cultivation tools, or of small machine tools like rotary tillers.

Fertilizer

Fertilizers (also spelled fertilisers) are compounds given to plants to promote growth; they are usually applied either through the soil, for uptake by plant roots, or by foliar feeding, for uptake through leaves. Fertilizers can be organic (composed of organic matter), or inorganic (made of simple, inorganic chemicals or minerals). They can be naturally occurring compounds such as peat or mineral deposits, or manufactured through natural processes (such as composting) or chemical processes (such as the Haber process).
They typically provide, in varying proportions, the three major plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium: N-P-K), the secondary plant nutrients (calcium, sulfur, magnesium), and sometimes trace elements (or micronutrients) with a role in plant nutrition: boron, chlorine, manganese, iron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum.
Both organic and inorganic fertilizers were called "manures" derived from the French expression for manual tillage, but this term is now mostly restricted to organic manure.
Though nitrogen is plentiful in the earth's atmosphere, relatively few plants engage in nitrogen fixation (conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to a biologically useful form). Most plants thus require nitrogen compounds to be present in the soil in which they grow.

Friday, 18 April 2008

Arboriculture

Arboriculture is the cultivation of trees and shrubs. The discipline includes the study of how they grow and respond to cultural practices and the environment as well as aspects of cultivation such as selection, planting, care, and removal.
The purpose is generally to manage amenity trees. That is trees where their value to the landscape is greater than that of their wood content. Trees offer environmental benefits as well as cultural, heritage and habitat for fauna. The combined value including aesthetics exceeds the value of a trees worth from a forestry wood perspective. Amenity trees are usually in a garden or urban setting, and arboriculture is the management of them for plant health and longevity, pest and pathogen resistance, risk management and ornamental or aesthetic reasons. In this, it needs to be distinguished from forestry, which is the commercial production and use of timber and other forest products from plantations and forests. Some definitions of the term arboriculture extend it only to the care of trees. "Arboriculture" is not synonymous with Arborsculpture.