Alkali Gypsum And Shade Trees
Categories:
Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation
Kindly advise how to apply gypsum, and how much, to heavy, sticky soil,
the worst sort of adobe and heavily saturated with alkali. We want to
plant shade trees. Eucalyptus and peppers succeed fairly well after once
started. Gypsum seems to help, but I don't know how much to use.
The amount of gypsum required to neutralize black alkali depends upon
how much black alkali there is to be neutralized, and no definite
amount, therefore, can be prescribed beforehand as sufficient without a
determination of the amount of alkali. In some experiments gypsum to the
amount of thirty tons to the acre or more has been used just for the
purpose of seeing how much the land would take, and a fine growth of
grain has been secured after using that much gypsum, but that, of
course, would be out of the question because the outlay would be more
than the land or the crop would be worth.
In the planting of trees at some distance apart, the tree can be
protected from destruction and enabled to make a stand in the soil by
using gypsum on the spot rather than the treatment of the whole surface.
In this way five or ten pounds of gypsum could be used by mixing with
the soil to fill a good-sized hole.