"Lime" your own business.

Lime 101 "The Basics":
So you want to get your pH up and someone says "just add lime".  You think to your self for a second about that green bottle sitting in the back corner of your fridge wondering where you are going to get enough of that stuff to cover your orchard!  Then you come to your senses and realize they are talking about Ag Lime.  Ok then, what is ag lime, and what does it look like, and where do I get it, how much do I need, how expensive is it, how do I spread it?  All good questions.  Lets start with "what is it and what does it look like."

The word "lime" refers to products derived from burnt (calcined) limestone, such as quicklime and hydrated lime. Limestone is a naturally occurring and abundant sedimentary rock consisting of high levels of calcium and/or magnesium carbonate, and/or dolomite (calcium and magnesium carbonate), along with small amounts of other minerals. It is extracted from quarries and underground mines all over the world.  (http://www.graymont.com/what_is_lime.shtml)  This is what pulverized lime looks like when it is damp.  It has about the same consistency as wet sand.

You can buy this stuff at your local farm COOP and it is really cheap.  I bought 3.5 tons April 2010 for under $100, not including hauling.  I rented a dumpbox trailer for the day at $100/day to pick up my load which if you have no other means of hauling, I highly recommend.  If you don't mind shoveling the stuff out of the back of a pickup truck, you can get is that way too.

That's all great and dandy but now, how much do I need go get?  That will depend on your soil sample.  You did get a soil analysis, right?  Without that bit of data, it is hard to say how much to apply.  In our area here in Iowa we were fortunate as we only needed about 1.75 tons/acre.  I have heard of a place in North Carolina needing up to 6 tons/acre.  That doesn't seem too bad for a couple of acres but imagine if you had 100 acres to apply that to!  Ouch!  One other item worth mentioning, as you start to bring up your pH past 7, other trace minerals may become what's call suspended in the soil.  Meaning that the trees and fungi are unable to get to them.  One mineral that is easiest to notice your trees are lacking is Iron.  You may notice that your leaves are blotted with yellow spots, that is a good indication that some mineral(s) are locked up and will need to be added to the soil so that can become available to the tree once again. To get a good understanding of the minerals your trees are consuming you will need to do a foliage analysis (test of the leafs).

Now the really hard part, how to you spread it.  If you have a small acreage your are managing, you may be thinking, "I have a really nice grass seed broadcast spreader, I will just use that."  Try to put lime through any type of broadcast spreader not designed to spread lime and you will sorely regret it.  If the lime gets the least amount of moisture in it, it will just plug up your spreader.  So that leaves you with just a couple of options.  You can ask that COOP to send a truck out and pay them to spread if for you, or you can spend a few bucks and buy what is called a drop spreader.  Yes a drop spreader is exactly what you think it is.  it spread your materials by way of gravity.  If you have a large acreage you are planning on managing then it might be worth it to invest in a large lime broadcast spreader.  "Wait, didn't you just say don't use a broadcast spreader"?    Yes, never use one that is not designed to spread lime.  Here is a link of a true broadcast lime spreader.  http://www.wikco.com/800.html  This is a small version of what the big farms run.  The large farms around here use huge 16 ton trucks with large balloon or float tires to spread their materials.

So what did I choose to do?  I found a small drop spreader for $30 bucks on http://www.craigslist.org/.  It's not big and doesn't hold a lot but I am only working on 1 acre at the moment and this was better then throwing lime in the field by hand.  I will just have to take more trips is all.  The down side to using these little 42" garden spreaders is that a small rock will bind the agitator and prevent it from spinning.  To get around this I took a wire rack and placed on top of the spreader to act as a sift when I loaded the spreader with lime.  This caught all the big rocks that would jam the spreader but was very labor intensive.

I hope you have learned something from my mistakes.  One would think this a simple task but sometimes it the simple things we tend to take for granted.