Abstract:Consecutive vegetable cultivation in greenhouse easily induces soil acidification or salinization and serious soil-borne diseases, which considerably affects sustainable development of the vegetable production. It is of great urgency to develop some effective techniques and methods to improve degraded vegetable soils. A pot experiment was conducted for comparative study on effects of the application of rice straw (RS), ryegrass (RG) and chicken manure (CM) at different rates (1%, 3% and 7%, of the soil in pot) coupled with or without flooding for 15 days on degraded vegetable soil. Compared to CKd (no manure and no flooding) and CKf (flooding only), the practices accelerated decline of soil Eh effectively eliminate accumulated NO3-, lowered the content of SO42− and increased soil pH. The effect became more significant with the increasing application rate of organic manure. In the ameliorated soils, except for soils applied with 7% of RS or CM, cucumber was better in growth and yield than in CKd and CKf. In terms of soil ameliorating effect, the organic manures show a decreasing order of RG > RS > CM. However, more organic manure does not necessarily improve cucumber in growth or yield.