|
Callao, Missouri | Well Matt, I hope your part of the world is a little different than mine. We just dropped almost $50/acre on lime for a new farm, and was hoping to see a profitable response. Where would you have suggested that I have invested that money instead? How about all the other positive effects that are supposed to come with a 6-7 pH, like increased flocculation, perculation, microbial activity, etc? Now go easy on me, I was only a gen. Ag major in school. You know, the guys too impatient to deal with animal sciences but too dumb to be claimed by ag econ.
I've never considered liming to reach 7 for most of my ground. Anything over 6.5 usually seemed painful enough.
I believe that there was someone else on this site, possibly from Indiana, who insisted that the lower pH soils outyielded the higher ones. I myself, haven't done any testing.
How do people lime using less than 2 ton/acre? In our area, that is the least that a truck will spread. Our lime is spread dry, with a spinner truck. It tests about 450 ENM, which is a different standard than the rest of the world uses, if I remember correctly. And why do some farms go for years before the test calls for a pH adjustment, when others like a dose of rock every 5 years, even though they have similar CEC values and management?
I have kicked around the incorporation vs leaving it on top choice quite a bit. In listening to the "experts", no-till is the only way to do things- it increases yields, soil health, lessens erosion, grows more hair, cures blindness, etc. Yet these same people, when asked about what to do with lime, usually respond to work it in WITH A DISK! I thought a disk was an inheritantly evil tool to all no-till crops? And if you do work the lime in, will it move UPWARD in the soil at the same rate as downward? That's a silly question, but it is one that I've considered.
FWIW, I'm incorporating the lime we spread this summer. Not because I felt it was better one way than the other, but because the field was "too rough". You see, there is a way to justify just about anything you really want to do.
| |
|
Lime application
