Effect of vinegar on earthworm counts, common bean growth and development in Central Uganda

Abstract

A large portion of Sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture is underperforming which is becoming a threat to poverty and hunger eradication. One of the main constraints of Africa’s agriculture is weeds that it hindering Africa from attaining it’s high agricultural potential. This has led to a wide spread chemical weeding to combat weed infestation a practice that has been found not to be ecologically and environmentally viable. Due to this outcome, weed control interventions that are environmentally friendly are being developed a process that has promoted organic farming where organic inputs are used in production a case in point acetic acid. Therefore this study was carried out to ascertain the effect of vinegar on the earthworm count, growth and development of common bean. On analysis, blocks treated with 5% vinegar were observed to contain the least response in terms of growth parameters namely plant height (51.27±0.352cm), number of pods (8.46±0.391), stem girth (3.15±0.057cm) and number of leaves (56.21±0.611) with the biggest response being observed in plots under hand weeding namely; number of pods (10.46±0.391), plant height (54.73±0.352cm), stem girth (3.31±0.057cm) and number of leaves (59.46±0.611) implying that 5% Vinegar was less effective in controlling weeds. On analysis of the earthworm count, hand weeding (5.00 ± 1.488) and vinegar (4.25 ± 1.488) had the highest mean number of earthworms implying that vinegar is an environmentally sound input hence having little effect on soil micro-organisms when used as a weed control input.