The Quantitative Effects of Different Growing Media on the Growth of Aubergine (Solanum melongena L.) and Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) in Autumn

The objective of this study was to examine the availability of some materials namely, forest soil, ash (firewood), charcoal, chicken manure, sheep manure, cow manure (decomposed), which can be easily found in Turkey. The vegetable crops tried were aubergine (Aydin siyahi) and cucumber (Beta 309 F1). The effect of growing media was found to be different depending on the species. In the study with forest soil and peat (GM1 and GM3) was ascertained that leaf dry weight (LDW), root dry weight (RDW), plant dry weight (PDW), total leaf area (TLA), leaf weight ratio (LWR), root weight ratio (RWR), stem weight ratio (SWR) and leaf area ratio (LAR) increased for aubergine during autumn season. This is similar to the increased in leaf dry weight (LDW), stem dry weight (SDW), root dry weight (RDW), plant dry weight (PDW), total leaf area (TLA) and leaf area ratio (LAR) of  media named GM1 and GM3 applied for cucumber during autumn season. The results obtained from the present study showed that the most suitable growing media were the media named GM1 (forest soil) and the media named GM3 (a mixture of forest soil and peat) for aubergine and cucumber during autumn season.