Re: home made fertilizer

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@mindspring.com>]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:13:49 -0800, Toby Hemenway
<hemenway@jeffnet.org> wrote:

>
>on 3/21/01 8:04 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. at lflondon@mindspring.com
>wrote:
>
>> Why would anyone want to add more lime that that needed to adjust pH?
>
>Dr. William Albrecht's discovery was that much of the benefit ascribed to
>lime's creation of a neutral pH was actually due to the calcium in lime. He

I assume that in this case it would still be advisable to avoid
mag-lime (the usual dolomitic limestone, high in magnesium) to avoid
soil-toxicity problems often encountered after years of application of
this form of limestone. There are a number of hi-calcium limestones
locally marketed and sold by mail order (there is a high quality
hi-cal lime mined in Tenessee). Wouldn't shell meal work as well,
applied along with rock phosphate and/or gypsum? Shell meal used to be
available around here sold as "feed lime" and was ground shells from
Florida or perhaps oyster shells. I'll bet this material will really
build soil structure, tilth and friability.

>showed that crops believed to require a neutral pH, such as alfalfa and some
>of the clovers, grew just fine on acid soil when calcium was added in the
>form of gypsum or rock phosphate. So he feels that sometimes you may need to
>add more calcium, or in a different form, than that required only to raise
>the pH.

>Acres USA has a several-volume set of his work, "The Albrecht Papers." I've
>got the first volume, which has lots of useful information on the whole
>"insoluble but available" approach to nutrients that he took, including much
>info on calcium. He is, I will warn you, a tedious and repetitive writer,
>but it's worth it. It also has a pretty good section on Cation Exchange
>Capacity (CEC).

Fascinating. I'll make this my next book purchase. Thanks for the
pointer.

LL
>
>Toby
>
>


L.F.London ICQ#27930345 lflondon@mindspring.com
www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech  london@ibiblio.org