Land use
Crops (and rotation)/vegetation: Cereals (wheat and barley) and watering plants including corn, sunflower, clover, sugar beet and bean. Annual rotation between cereals and other watering plants is always applied.
Crop/vegetation calendar & tillage practices: For cereals, tillage and sowing are done in October and harvesting in July. For watering plants tillage and sowing is in April and harvesting is in October. All cropping activities (from tillage to harvesting) are mechanized except weeding of watering plants by hoeing by hand in July.
Chemicals (fertilizer, pesticides) applied: NPK and microelement fertilizers are applied before and after sowing mostly by pulverization. Pesticides are used by mixing seed for cereals and by pulverization over green parts of watering plants in timely periods.
Irrigation: For cereals, spring water is applied two times in April and May. Watering plants are watered about six times between May and August mostly by spring water. Drip irrigation is seldom used for latter.
Irrigated bean cropping in the SIP field.
Natural vegetation, main types and species composition: none.
Stocking density of animals: A total of 750 sheep graze in the pastureland of about 0,300 km2 in vicinity of Apak Yayla. A significant part of these animals are fed in fenced artificial pastures due to poor quality of natural pasturelands in the last years. The farmer collaborating with us owns 300 sheep and 100 cattle which are mostly fenced through the year.
