Lime

While I haven't had soil tests run this year, we have run soil tests a few times over the last few years and we have known for a while that our pH is low in most of our ground.  Our ground tests between 5 and 5.5 and ideally for most vegetables it should be closer to 6.5 or 7.  A pH of 7 is neutral, anything lower than that means the ground is more acidic, anything higher means it's more alkaline.  So last week Milan and I went over to Oakley's Fertilizer in Beebe to pick up a buggy and some pelletized lime to apply to the vegetable fields to help raise our pH a little bit.

We picked up one ton of lime.  The guys at Oakley's recommended an application rate of 200 lbs/acre. So one ton (2000 lbs) should have covered my three acres of vegetable fields and then been a start in our hay field.  This is what one ton of pelletized lime looked like in the buggy.

The buggy had a belt driven spreader on it so I just pulled it through the fields with my vehicle and it slung the lime behind me and to both sides.  

Unfortunately the lime didn't go quite as far as I expected it due to my error.  I started to spread it before Robert got home from work but soon realized I couldn't see it on the ground and couldn't tell how far it was spreading on either side of me.  

When Robert got home he watched me make a pass and described the spread but I still made my passes too close together and used all of the lime up before making it very far into the hayfield.  Oops.  As usual this was another learning opportunity for me.