Few soils do not benefit from the application of lime. Just be sure the washing is off the clothes line, that you have some nice bright orange hazard cones for the main road, and that your neighbours contribute something for the calcium applied to their property as well. Yeah right.
Lime, in the form of stone, is the fifth most abundant element in the world's crust and limestone/chalk forms 20% of the world's sedimentary rock, while records of burning the stone to make quicklime date back to the fourth millenium BC when it was used as a building material.
Described as one of the basic factors of soil fertility, and increasingly seen as an important factor in animal health as well, lime applications have many important effects. The calcium it contains is an essential plant food, it induces the very minute grains of a clay soil to form aggregates making clay soils coarser and thereby improving its texture and promoting drainage and aeration, while in sandy soils it cements the particles together thus giving cohesion. Even more importantly, by neutralising acidity a sour or acid soil becomes sweet, aiding the life of bacteria which break down organic matter making valuable plant nutrients available to plants. Other plant foods, including nitrogen and potash are more freely available where there is adequate lime.
Getting it on the ground is the hard part, and with lime particles larger than 150 microns being of little real value, it's that fine dust cloud blowing over the neighbours fence that is the most readily available to the soil, and therefore the most valuable.
John Barnes from Rural Research Limited and supplier of Nitrosol, the only organically certified blood and bone product available, has teamed up with Peter Lancaster from CRT to produce a new and innovative product to address these issues and get the fine lime on the land where it's intended.
"Vitalime is a unique product," John explains, "no one else has done this before. The lime we are using is soft lime with a high calcium carbonate reading of 95%, it gives us a product that is 100% active."
The special formulation utilises stack dust, a by-product of the Milburn Cement Works in Westport, to bind the product together and provide all the benefits of fine lime yet with the consistency of dolomite. It also has a small potassium and sulphur content.
"It will work quickly and be cost effective because you will get it all on the ground. It has immediately available fines in it, plus a slightly coarser fraction which will give you a longevity."
"And it's not so much the tonnage of lime you put on, but the actual surface area that makes the difference. The pellets break down quickly when they hit the soil and they'll spread. The trick was to develop something that would be hardy enough to hold together while you spread it, but soft enough to break down quickly."
"What we are trying to do here is give the farmer all the product he's already paid for, not some of it." John says.
"Getting a good response from the pasture will give better animal weights, and both Peter and I are driven by production. It's the dollars at the end of the day in the back pocket that's going to count. We are liming for today, not tomorrow."
