Key points of planting and cultivation techniques of licorice

An overview of licorice, alias sweet grass root, red licorice, powder grass. Licorice GlycyrrhizauralensisFisch., a leguminous plant, was used as medicine with root and rhizome. It has the effect of clearing heat and detoxification, moistening the lungs and relieving cough, reconciling various medicines, and grilled licorice has the effect of tonifying the spleen and tonifying qi.

Plant characteristic perennial herbs with stout, cylindrical roots, sweet, brownish red rind. The stem is erect, the lower part is slightly lignified. Leaves alternate; parasite pinnately compound leaves, leaflets 7 Mel 17, ovate-elliptic, both surfaces covered with glands and short hairs. Racemes axillary, butterfly-shaped, purplish red. Pods oblong, sometimes falcate or annular curved, densely covered with brown spiny glandular hairs. Seeds oblate. The florescence is from June to July and the fruiting period is from July to September.

Growth habit

Licorice grows mostly in the north temperate zone, in plains, mountains or river valleys at an altitude of 0,200 meters. Wild licorice is associated with apocynum venetum, Populus euphratica, Reed, Artemisia and Ephedra and other plants. The soil is mostly sandy. The pH of soil should be neutral or slightly alkaline, and it does not grow well in acidic soil. Licorice likes the ecological environment with sufficient light and large temperature difference between day and night, and has the characteristics of light, drought, heat, salt and alkali tolerance and cold tolerance. Licorice is suitable for planting in northwest, north and northeast of China.

Cultivation, management, harvesting and processing

First, land selection and land preparation

Sandy soil with fertile soil, loose soil, good drainage and low salinity is usually selected. Areas with waterlogged basins and high groundwater levels are not suitable for planting. Generally deep ploughing about 20 cm, ploughing flat rake fine. Areas with heavy clay soil are not suitable for planting licorice.

Second, planting

Live broadcast of licorice. Seed treatment, physical method, can use coarse sand or rice grinder to grind the seed coat to make the seed coat rough and increase water permeability. As a perennial herb, licorice can be planted in spring, summer and autumn. Mechanical or manual sowing can be used, using strip sowing, sowing depth of 2-3 cm, appropriate suppression after sowing.

Raise seedlings and transplant. Sowing seeds around the middle of April when the daily average temperature is stable above 5 ℃. Mechanical or manual sowing can be used, using strip sowing, sowing depth of 2 cm to 3 cm, row spacing of 30 cm. Appropriate suppression after the broadcast. The sowing rate per mu is about 20 kg. Seedling transplanting is generally carried out in the spring of the second year. When transplanting, open the ditch, put the licorice flat into the ditch, and then cover the soil to suppress. This is beneficial to the growth and development of rhizomes and the convenience of mining.

Third, the field management of licorice.

The main results are as follows: 1. If the row spacing of seedling sowing is 30 cm, the plant spacing can be kept at 18.5 cm to 20 cm.

2. Irrigated licorice should always keep the soil moist before and after seedling emergence to facilitate seedling emergence and seedling growth. Specific irrigation should depend on soil type and salinity: sandy non-saline-alkali or slightly saline-alkali soil can be irrigated after sowing; soil viscosity or salinity is heavier, so water should be irrigated before sowing, sowing soil moisture, and no irrigation after sowing, so as to avoid soil consolidation and salinity increase. The key to the cultivation of licorice is to protect the seedlings. Generally, the plants will not be watered after they grow up.

3. Intertillage weeding is generally carried out in the year of seedling emergence, especially in the seedling stage, licorice roots begin to tiller from the second year, weeds are difficult to compete with them, and there is no need for intertillage weeding.

4. It is necessary to apply sufficient base manure before fertilization and sowing, and barnyard manure is better. In the sowing year, phosphate fertilizer can be applied in early spring and 2000kg / mu organic fertilizer can be applied per mu before freezing in winter. Licorice root has nodule, has the effect of nitrogen fixation, generally does not apply nitrogen fertilizer.

5. Diseases and insect pests and their control are prone to powdery mildew and rust in rainy seasons, which can be sprayed with Bordeaux solution of 1: 1 and 150; red spiders are prone to occur in dry seasons, which can be sprayed with 40% dimethoate EC 1000-1500 times. Underground pests have ground tigers bite roots, you can use 90% trichlorfon 0.5 kg of raw medicine and 50 kg of bait mixed into poison bait.

IV. Harvesting and processing

From late September to early October in autumn, the aboveground stems and leaves were collected when they withered. Licorice roots must be deeply dug, must not be cut off or hurt the root bark, after digging out to remove the residual stem, soil, avoid washing with water, while fresh to separate the main root and lateral root, remove Reed head, hair, branch, sun to semi-dry, tied into small handfuls, and then to the whole dry; it can also be excavated before the stems and leaves of licorice are unearthed in spring, but the mining quality is better in autumn.