The aim of our study is to examine the effects of different groundcover methods on nutrient availability and uptake of apple orchard. Theexperiment was carried out at the orchard of TEDEJ Rt. at Hajdúnánás-Tedej, in Eastern Hungary. The orchard was set up on lowland chernozem soil in the Nyírség region. It was established in the autumn of 1999, using Idared cultivar grafted on MM106 rootstocks at a spacing of 3.8 x 1.1 m.The applied treatments were divided into two groups according to origins

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... d effects. On the one hand, different livestock manures (cow,horse and pig), on the other hand different mulch-matters (straw, pine bark mulch, black foil) were used. The different manures and mulcheswere applied on the surface to test the effectiveness of these materials.The effectiveness of manure treatments was higher than the other treatments on AL soluble P content of soil. Mostly the manure treatmentsincreased the AL soluble K of soil. Our all treatments increased 0.01 M CaCl2 soluble NO3 - -N content of the examined soil layers. The effectof manure treatments was the highest. From the results it was evident that the amount of easily soluble organic nitrogen fraction distributedmore homogeneously than the other mineral N fractions examined.Our results can be summarized as follows:1. Our results pointed out that the used ground covering matters divided into several categories regarding its effect.2. The available N, P and K contents of soil were mostly increased by applying manures.3. The effectiveness of straw, mulch and mostly black foil was lower.4. Differences were found between nutrient supplying treatments and the treatments which did not supply nutrients.