SOILLESS SUBSTRATES FOR BABY LEAVES GROWING

Two experiments were conducted in a glasshouse without heating and additional lighting. The effects of different substrates on the number of leaves and yield per plant of lettuce and spinach, grown as baby leaves were examined. Preliminary test shows significantly higher yield achieved on natural peat based substrates with added zeolites. In the final experiment, compared to pure commercial substrates T2-T4, significantly higher yields (g/plant) were obtained in their combinations with enriched zeolites T5-T7 (8.3, 8.23, 8.12, i.e. 9.9, 9.96, and 9.84g for treatments i.e. species respectively). The use of enriched zeolites improves the productivity of natural peats and commercial substrates.