Evaluation of Substrate Stratification, Fertilizer Placement, and Mulching on Growth of Common Nursery Weed Species and Container-Grown Ornamental Species

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

 

The manuscript is well-written and addresses an important aspect of the production of ornamental plants. However, the materials and methods need to be clarified. The attached file details the comments and areas to be clarified.

 

Best regards,

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Good quality English with a few minor mistakes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Evaluation of Substrate Stratification, Fertilizer Placement and Mulching on Growth of Common Nursery Weed Species and Container-Grown Ornamental Species." aims to evaluate the effect of fertilizer placement on ornamental plants grown using stratified substrates and the resulting effect on suppression of common weed species.  Even if the topic is not entirely innovative, considering the thesis and the experiments done, the paper is attractive for readers.  Before being considered for possible publication, the manuscript needs major revisions.  First, the introduction needs to be completed with further bibliographical references (lines 30-35, 71-74). It is advisable also to  review the text. Some adjectives are repeated several times, such as "additionally". Also "[7] reported" should be corrected with "Mathers [7]" (line 48). It is recommended to make this changes throughout the text (also to line 359), as suggested by the journal's guidelines. The materials and methods section should also be improved, it is repetitive and unclear. Some figures could enhance the understanding of the experimental design. Paragraphs 2.1 and 2.2 should be enriched with bibliographical references especially lines 121 and 166-170. Authors are sure that 7 days in the stove are needed to keep the weight constant and no less. To improve the quality of the paper, the statistical tests used for the analysis of the variance hypotheses could be inserted. In the results section, the figures and tables need to be improved. To the figures, must be added the y-axes and the letters relating to significance (figure 1), specifying their use in the caption.  For the tables instead, the abbreviations (for example N.S.) and the letters of significance, when are missing, must be reported in the caption.  Section 3.3 is interesting. It would be advisable to include in the manuscript the complete characterization of the substrates used to better comment the results obtained. The authors should also include a correlation between the parameters analyzed in the leachates and the growth index.  This relationship would be an added value. Furthermore, it is recommended that the authors merge the results section with the discussions section as the results are already discussed in the first section.  Finally, the paper lacks one of the fundamental parts of a scientific article, i.e. the conclusions. The bibliographic references also need to be reviewed.  Authors need to format this paragraph following the instructions for authors. Furthermore, some references should be updated, others should be replaced. The journals cited are always the same: HortTechnology, Weed Sci. for example.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for responding to the comments. Kindly note a few additional comments:

1. Changes in line 114 and 166 are noted. Consistency when reporting the depth of the top strata. In some places, the authors use 2.5 cm and in other places they use 2.54 cm.

2. The response on the rise hull treatment is noted. It seems the authors did not use the rice hull/mulching treatment with the different bark sizes. Then it should be clear in the ms that the mulch was used with only one layer of the bark, no top or bottom strata.

3. The response to the full sun and shade is also noted. The authors should then change line 105 to indicate that experiment 1 was under full sun and experiment 2 under shade (or whatever the case).

4. The response to the comment on 0.8 cm per day is still confusing. The response suggests that the pots were watered and then excess water was collected or the water was measured with a measuring cylinder before watering. In both cases how was 0.8 cm determined? A measuring cylinder measures the volume of liquids, of which the units are ml. How did the authors get to 0.8 cm watering per day? The authors responded that soil depth was not used to measure irrigation but the statement still reads that the containers were watered 0.8 cm per day via overhead irrigation.

The quality of English language is very good, with very few minor errors.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

not all suggestions have been taken into consideration. For example, no new bibliographic references have been added and existing ones have not been updated. The letters of significance are some in uppercase and others in lowercase. The statistical analysis section has not been improved. The conclusions need to be rewritten.

In my opinion, the papar is not ready to be published and needs further revisions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx