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.