|
King City, Mo | Ok....let's see if I can explain this. First off I'm a farmer and own a little ground. I'm also a CCA and plot guy for regional soybean seed co. I am a student of the Albrecht's soil system.
Gypsum is not some magical stuff that fixes all soils. You need to figure out what your limiting factor is and correct that the cheapest way possible.
Gypsum is ca and sulfur.
High Ca lime is high ca low mg.
Dolomitic lime has more mg in it.
Which lime do you need depends on your base saturations of ca and mg and your cec.
If you have a sand soil you need upwards of 20% mg to be "ideal" if you have a heavier soil like mine you want your mg down to 10-12%. Ca you want +68%. This works here as Albrecht did a lot of his work at the u of mo.
You can get sulfur from ams, or elemental S too.
The sulfur bonds with the mg and makes epson salts and if you have the drainage it leaches off. If your mg% is higher then ideal you want this to happen but you must also need Ca to make gypsum the right amendment to buy if it's priced right and can be trucked economically.
Gypsum is hard to get here at a low cost. Pel gyp was $80/tn fob last time I looked into it.
I have good aglime 6miles away when the query has it in stock for $10-11/tn fob. We spread 4tn back when it was $5-6/tn then more later as we got funds and time to cover the acres.
I use ams on every acre every year. As my sulfur source. 100# on soys and more on corn and wheat.
Think of mg as the size of a dime, ca the size of a quarter and K the size of a half dollar as a rough visual. Look at your base sats and use those % and the coins outta 100 and you can visualize the space between the cations. If you have more mg you have less space between and it's harder to water to infiltrate in. So if you had high mg and needed ca and applied gypsum you would see an improvement in your soil.
You need to figure out what your soil and plants need. Soil test, coupled with plant analysis at the right times will help you get thier.
Sitting at the tractor pull last weekend I came up with this analogy. Tractor 1 goes down the track and powers out. Tractor 2 goes and spins out. Tractor three walks the dog and puts 20ft on them. Tractor 1 had too much traction or not enough hp for the track. Tractor two had plenty of power but couldn't put the power to use. Now tractor three had everything just right, not too much hp and traction. Hope that helps.
| |
|
?? for Brad at lawfarms (and others) about gypsum
