It is called fallow to the land in which it is not sown during one or more vegetative cycles, with the purpose of recovering and storing organic matter and moisture. It also refers to the land that is left to rest for one or several years. Usual in crop rotation.
During the time that he remains uneducated, he undergoes a series of tasks to improve his predisposition to cultivation.
Fallow is a common practice in extensive agriculture, and is part of crop rotation systems. It assumes you have unproductive soil, but it helps keep your fertility and weeds or diseases at bay.
There are several types of fallow. According to the time in which the land is allowed to rest, we have, for example, “year and time”, in which one year is cultivated and the next it rests; or "to the third", in which one year and two breaks are cultivated. Depending on whether or not something is planted on the plot, we have "fallow seed" or "white fallow" respectively. Species of the legume family are planted (lentils, chickpeas, yeras, vetch, etc.) that enrich the soil and instead of collecting the crop, they are buried in the ground.
There are many ways to exploit and treat crops. If we talk about horticulture on a professional level, a popular technique is fallow.
Although the goal of a crop is to be as productive as possible, maximize profits and minimize losses, sometimes you have to stop using a piece of land to ensure its future productivity. This is the premise on which fallow is based, an ancient technique practiced by farmers in the Middle Ages. It consists in that every time a piece of land is left uncultivated, so that it breathes, regenerates and obtains the necessary nutrients and the degree of humidity. By leaving these pieces of land to rest, the productivity of the garden is assured for years to come.
We can distinguish between short and long fallow. In the short fallow type , it only takes one or two years until the land is re-cultivated, so the land does not fully regenerate. In long barbecues, a long period of time passes between cultivation and cultivation, and the soil fully recovers.
We can also make distinctions regarding the different ways of practicing this agricultural technique. Herbaceous fallow consists of leaving the land completely abandoned. That is, no maintenance work is done. On the other hand, the fallow worked plowed, to aerate the soil and to regenerate its nutrients.
Numerous studies have shown that fallowing is one of the most efficient and productive agricultural techniques. In Spain, this technique is used mainly in crops in the Mediterranean area.
