The feathered rats were back again this afternoon. That gobbler has one helluva beard on him.

Why does your lime leech out that bad and nothing else? What do you think your ph was prior to application?

It wasn’t added due to heavy leaching. The application of lime I made two springs ago just didn’t raise the Ca and pH levels up enough. I went from 5.1 to 5.8……300 lbs/ac of Ca to roughly 950 lbs/ac….but it never went any higher. When I checked last fall it was still in that same range. I should have already added some more lime last year. Keep in mind too that over the last several years my holding capacity for Ca has grown as my organic matter levels in the soil have grown. I probably need around 1500+ lbs/ac of Ca present in the soil now to balance….maybe more. I’ll pull another sample in a few months and see how we look right before fall planting.

How much lime did you add to only bring it up 0.7?

It was around 3,000 lbs/ac. I noticed it had a lot of larger lime particles in it. One of the reasons I haven’t added any more lime until now is because I could actually still see pieces of lime in the soil a year after the first application. I thought maybe the pH and Ca would continue to come up as that Ca broke down. One thing I’m curious about is how deep the lime leaches in my really sandy soil. The layer of soil down below the 6-7 inches of black organic soil I’ve built has a horrible pH of 4.9-5.0…..I’ve measured it before and it’s 4ft down to the clay layer in the center of the field. That’s a lot of cubic feet of dirt.

Dang. That's a lot of lime for not much movement. It would've been interesting to see what it was before this last application.

It was still around 5.7 last fall with 900 lbs/ac of Ca……There’s more to pH though than just the simple lime buggy discussions that we often have on forums. It actually fluctuates naturally throughout the different seasons and is influenced by a number of factors. I’ll admit I was disappointed when the pH didn’t jump right up to 6.8 after that first application, but a silver lining in it all….. and what I’m very pleased to see happening for the long term…..is that my topsoil is actually holding onto the Ca very well over time.

Once I do get my Ca levels up to 1500 ish lbs/ac or whatever my balancing point is now…..then I won’t have to worry about bottoming out at 200-300 lbs/ac again every year or two like happened with heavy tillage. It should hold onto and continue to recycle most of that 1500 lbs over time. I’m not saying that will be the end of ever adding lime again but it will definitely be under much different circumstances than what I’ve dealt with in this rebuilding process. Hopefully, my OM% will continue to grow and with it so will my nutrient holding capacity. If that happens then I’ll add more lime because I can now hold say 2,000 lbs/ac of Ca. That’s a far different growing environment for a plant than the sand pit I started with that only had 300 lbs/ac of available Ca for plant growth. That’s a more important long term objective to focus on instead of getting too hung up on whether my pH the next round ends up being 5.9 or 6.5……if my Ca concentration goes up another 600-700+ lbs/ac then we are headed in the right direction.

What would it mean to you if the ph didn't go down a couple years after an application?

I guess I would take that to mean that you are maintaining a good supply of negatively charged ions in your soil for the positively charged Ca to stay bonded to. Those negative charges are either coming from clay particles and/or organic matter. In my situation, I have nearly zero clay in my soil…..so all I have to rely on to hold onto that lime is the OM I build in the soil. If I burn it up, then so goes my holding capacity for my lime. That’s how I got to where I was at a few years ago with Ca levels down in the 250-300 lb/ac range. This is a common scenario in our part of the world because so many of us are dealing with sandy soils.

The darker topsoil is full of decomposed organic matter and is why it has the blacker color. That layer of soil has an exponentially higher holding capacity for both nutrients and water than does the orangish colored layer below it. That is what is holding onto and recycling my Ca (lime) and why Ca levels (K too) are not drastically falling in my sandy field. Take the OM out of the equation in this situation though and you significantly impact your holding capacity. This is why some folks add lime and then end up back where they started after a couple years. There is nothing to hold it so it quickly leaches away. Again, we're talking about sandy fields. Folks with higher clay levels won't see impacts of the same severity since clay can't be burnt up through tillage.

I wonder why the lime doesn't hold and the other stuff does. Do you consider your fertilization needs to be high or as high as they were?

No..... Fert needs are pretty low. I’m guessing a lot of what is happening is due to my really low CEC soils. I kind of wonder if the soil test folks aren’t recommending too much lime to be applied at one time on this kind of soil. Ideally on this sand, I bet you would probably be better to apply something like 500-1000 lbs every 6 months for several rotations rather than dumping one big load out in one dose. I don’t know though. I’m not sure what it happening to the rest of that lime. I have good infiltration on this field and don’t have much runoff so the lime doesn’t have much choice but to leach down. If it’s leaching into that subsoil and making it a more hospitable growing environment, then that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Like I was saying in the other post…it may be 3,000 lbs of lime but the cubic feet of dirt we are talking about conditioning is pretty massive if the lime is leaching into the subsoil.

When I first made this a foodplot and broke it up for the first time, I had a balanced pH of 6.8 with 1200 lbs/ac of Ca. It used to be a horse pasture so I assume it got horse manure applied on the regular. It had been fallow for several years when I bought the place. When I brought it back to 900 lbs with that first application of lime, I wasn’t far off from being back where I started. The difference now though is I figure I’ve probably built more holding capacity than I had originally had with all the OM I’ve added….. so it will likely take me having closer to 1500 lbs of Ca to balance. Maybe this application will get us there.

Good luck!

In another thread in the Serious Forum I was talking about managing your field in a manner to produce the best late winter cereal grains…….Especially for those folks in sandy soils…..being able to grow that really productive field of late winter cereal grains starts with soil health. If you’re like the vast majority of folks and only have a small plot here and a small plot there….just accept the limitations that scale is having on you and quit worrying about trying to accomplish non-productive goals. Change your focus from trying to grow a ½ acre of beans this summer… to trying to produce the most productive soil you can....that in turn will grow better winter plots.

Roots are a major player in soil building. It’s baffling a lot of folks why I’m choosing to grow what most would call “weeds” this summer….even fertilizing them. I had one guy on the QDMA forum that even accused me of abandoning what I started because I wasn’t planting something like buckwheat or cowpeas this summer. However, back to the roots playing a major role in soil building…..I’ve got a high deer density and only a couple acres to plant. It doesn’t do me any good to plant a bunch of stuff that will get wiped out and never thrive this summer. If the plants do not thrive and eventually mature then they won’t grow the massive root structures I’m looking for. It’s through roots that I will be able to take that black dirt you see deeper and deeper into the soil profile……It’s also through roots that I will continue to build “soil structure”. I can grow the hell out of a ragweed this summer and gets its roots to penetrate down into that inhospitable subsoil….improving my overall soil health from several perspectives. I can’t even get a bean or stalk of buckwheat to make it much longer than a few weeks because the deer wipe it out. Most folks could grow exceptional late winter cereal grains even in the worst soils if they would be open to adjusting their management practices.

I forgot all about having a piece of a roll of this industrial landscaping fabric. This stuff is porous and allows water to flow through it. I was putting another round of maters in the ground and used the fabric to make one more adjustment to my management practices to get the soil temps warmer but still moist at the same time. I think this will work. The straw will hold in moisture and feed my worms and other microbial life while the fabric warms things up a bit. There’s some huge earthworms in these beds. The soil is mostly made from decayed leaf mulch. Still have room to start about 3 more mater plants in a couple weeks. I’m trying to stagger my planting times a little bit.

Now we’re cookin with peanut oil………..

Just returned from our camp and applied 1 ton of pelletized lime to our fields.

I was surprised to see how the rye and Crimson clover had burned out already. The white clover planted last fall is all that is left.

Planning on soil testing again in September and applying recommendations from there.

Any suggestions on how to increase our OM?

CNC you mentioned leaf matter with the landscape fabric picture. My two currently 1/4 acre openings get a large amount of leaf litter. How does one deal with leaves?

It’s just a matter of growing lots of plant matter (biomass) and recycling back to the soil both through roots and through above ground plant growth…..and then managing that organic matter in a manner to where it doesn’t rapidly burn up before you can add more.....minimizing tillage. When a sandy field has been heavily tilled for years and is completely void of OM, then plant growth will struggle and it’ll be hard to grow enough biomass in the spring and summer to turn the ship around. These beginning stages may require you to pamper the field a little differently than you have in the past to get things on the right track. You may need to fertilize in the spring and summer to promote more plant growth at first. You may need to hit your cereal grains with a dusting of nitrogen in late winter or early spring so that it will produce enough biomass to make a difference. Once things get turned around then you can adjust your management accordingly.

How much nitrogen do you add to the field in the fall? Does the leaf litter smother your field before it has a chance to get going?

Just acquired permission this past December but saw a good amount of leaves and it's in the middle of hardwoods. Just walked it today for first time since end of jan. Very thin stands of rye grass in amongst the rocky soil. Too rocky for sod bustin'. Gonna dig soil tests next weekend and look to amend into the early fall then mow and throw. Have transplanted some Honeysuckle cuttings to peat pots and plan to try and create screens with them around the edges and along trails in a month. very interested in using native type perennials as much as possible.

Leaves certainly won’t be a bad thing for the soil but you may have issues with them smothering out your small seedlings when they start heavily falling on a small plot like that. I think your best way to combat that, other than just eliminating the leaves with a blower, would be to get the cereal grains up and growing as fast as possible before the leaves fall. It may be a good idea to plant a little earlier than you normally would to allow more time to get some growth on the cereal grains. I don’t plant until the end of Sept or first of October but you might consider going ahead and planting early in September if weather permits. It’s just an idea. Also, make sure not to skimp on the nitrogen. Push the grain growth as much as you can before leaf fall occurs. At some point those leaves are likely going to tie up some N as they begin to decompose.

Take some pics as you go along. I’d love to see how some of these plots progress as y’all use these techniques.