Development and yielding of Virginia fanpetals depending on some elements of agricultural practices

In the years 2016–2018, two field experiments with species Sida hermaphrodita L. Rusby named Virginia fanpetals (syn. Virginia mallow) later in the manuscript as Sida, were carried out in the Świętokrzyskie province. They were located on light soil prone to drought. The experiments were established in a set of randomized blocks in triplicate. The results were statistically analyzed and significance of differences was assessed by Tukey’s test. In the first experiment, the influence of sowing dates (beginning, half, end of May) and fertilization before sowing (NPK: 20, 20, 40 kg∙ha–1 and control without fertilization) on the development of plants in the first growing year, were examined. In the second experiment, development and yielding of Sida after using three different propagation materials (seedling, root cuttings and seed sowing) in the first three years of cultivation, were compared. The test results clearly showed beneficial effect of pre-sowing fertilization compared to the control (without fertilization). From three May sowing dates, in three years on average, sowing in the middle of this month turned out to be the best. On the light soil prone to drought, the best conditions for growth and yield were provided by seedling and root cuttings, the least favorable – sowing seeds. The average heat of combustion was determined as 18.515 MJ∙kg–1.