site logo

The Unproductive Farm

Categories: THE NEED OF LIME

When a soil expert visits an unproductive farm

to determine its needs, he gives his chief attention to four possible

factors in his problem: lack of drainage, of lime, of organic matter,

and of available plant-food. His first concern regards drainage. If the

water from rains is held in the surface by an impervious stratum

beneath, it is idle to spend money in other amendments until the

difficulty respecting drainage ha
been overcome. A water-logged soil

is helpless. It cannot provide available plant-food, air, and warmth to

plants. Under-drainage is urgently demanded when the level of dead

water in the soil is near the surface. The area needing drainage is

larger than most land-owners believe, and it increases as soils become

older. On the other hand, the requirements of lime, organic matter, and

available plant-food are so nearly universal, in the case of

unproductive land in the eastern half of the United States, that they

are here given prior consideration, and drainage is discussed in

another place when methods of controlling soil moisture are described.

The production of organic matter is so important to depleted soils, and

is so dependent upon the absence of soil acidity, that the right use of

lime on land claims our first interest.



More

;