A comparative analysis of the efficacy of cow, chicken and pig wastes on spinach (Spinacia oleracea) as alternatives to artificial fertilizers.

Abstract

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is a low growing fleshly leaved annual plant that can be used as a vegetable and or to treat a variety of diseases. This study aimed at comparing the effectiveness of cow, chicken and pig manure on the plant height, leaf number, leaf length as well as root length of spinach. An experiment was conducted in a greenhouse at Africa University between the months of June and July 2018. The experiment was a randomised complete block design (RCBD) with chicken manure, cow manure, pig manure, fertilizer and no treatment as the treatments. The no treatment was used as a negative control whilst fertilizer was used as the positive control. Spinach seeds were planted 2cm below the soil surface in pots 30cm apart from each other. Weeding, watering and pest control measures were done uniformly across the treatments, when and as required. Data was collected after thinning at weekly intervals for six weeks and the parameters included plant height and number of leaves. At maturity, leaf area as well as root length were recorded. The one-way analysis of variance displayed significant differences (p<0.05) between the treatments and the negative control. Chicken manure gave the highest leaf area, plant height and leaf number followed by cow manure, while pig manure gave the lowest. However, Tukey-Kramer multiple comparison analysis indicated that was no significant difference between chicken manure and the positive control (p>0.05). These results therefore show that chicken manure is more effective on spinach growth rate as compared to cow and pig manures.