When I came to Arkansas back in 1960 and spent some time around potbelly stoves in a few general stores – I kept hearing bad vibes about ag lime. How worthless it was. What a waste of time to even mess with it. Good place to keep your mouth shut. ‘Cause these men were serious and no whippersnapper under a cowboy hat was going to convince them of anything about the virtues of crushed limestone.
It took me years to figure out why the simple process of neutralizing acid soil was so opposed. It had to do more with back-breaking work than the chemical process. During the depression and several years following, even today, the USDA had plans to help the farmer. Using ag lime was one of them.
Scientist knew the addition of limestone would improve the crops grown on acidic soil. So, the ASCS gave farmers ground ag lime to spread on the fields.
At that time these men were boys. Farmers had no way to easily spread the ton of lime per acre. But these same men were boys then and dad told them to load up the lime in a wagon and spread it over the field. With what? Why with a shovel, of course. No front end loaders, no whirly-bird fertilizer spreader on a three point hitch, not even a V-shaped drill.
You can imagine the care taken by this workforce to be certain it was evenly spread. Limestone is not nitrogen fertilizer and the results on the broom sedge and wild grasses was not a revealing sight. That was the point they used at the wood stove meetings.
It did not help one little bit, but think about the muscles it built and the calluses it caused. All that this phenomenon did, despite its well-intended purpose, was make future farmers turn their backs on calcium as a soil amendment. I can laugh about it now, but with an education in agronomy, I was really upset back then.
What does lime do? Simple enough, the calcium ion replaces acid ion and makes the soil a better environment for the plants. You can’t over lime with ground ag lime. It is a natural occurring thing. Simply, ancient sources of calcium set down eons ago crushed to make the material more available to do its job. When the calcium is needed it is utilized to form a non-acid or neutral situation in your soil.
One old man told me about working his back-side off applying the lime that they gave him to a rather steep meadow on our old place years before. He planted lespedeza that winter and had to mow it that summer with a team of horses, it was so thick. This old man never chimed in about the waste of time spent spreading it – his story encouraged me.
We applied two tons of lime to a field on the lower place in the fall and again in March. Here again was our luck, the seed I found on a deal was 2 years old. So, we put plenty of it on per-acre. That was long enough to kill the fungus in the fescue seed.
I can recall tilling it to get it ready. It took me several years to learn, in the clay-rocky ground of the Ozarks, the best tool is a spring toothed tiller. We usually went to the frame with it to loosen up the ground. That took a few trips, but it opened the soil. I could not get over the earth worms I was shaking up to the top of the ground. Later, I bought a book on raising earth worms and found it said to test your beds with litmus paper. If it shows acid, apply ag lime. Not lime like you used in an outhouse to contain odor. That will kill them – plain old ground limestone won’t.
Your soil is a medium to grow grass. At neutral it will release more of the minerals the plants need. A soil full of earthworms makes an ideal place to grow crops or pasture. Money’s always tight on a farm operation, but a steady investment in ag lime will make a better place to grow things in the future.
The best to you and yours, until we meet again.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
