Over Lime Your Soils

Growers Solution

Sep 1

By Steve Cuddeback - Cuddeback Farms, Skaneateles, NY

I came across a soil test of our garden plot that was sampled in 2012. This plot is 1.2 acres and was bought by my father Howard in the mid 1970's. Wondering how much damage high calcium lime would do when applied in high amounts, we started spreading. Between 1976 and 1995, there have been 10 tons applied each dose for at least 5 doses. That would be 50 tons of calcium lime per acre. Truth be known, I think the total is more like 70 tons per acre.

We grow sweet corn and garden veggies in that plot, and have not used any dry fertilizer, only Growers in-furrow and foliar feedings. In 2000, my father had parsnips that he wanted to dig up and he was having trouble finding the bottom of the root. I came over with the backhoe and dug down more than 30 inches to get to the bottom roots. We had never seen parsnips grow that deep before. Dad still comments on how sweet and tender those parsnips were. No one would believe this story, so we took pictures (copies of those pictures are available from Growers Chemical Corporation upon request).

In 2012, I sampled the garden plot to see how bad we had ruined this soil. The test results are included here (figure 1). The phosphorus, potassium and calcium values are at the right edge of the test in the very high levels. Where did all that fertility come from? We applied no dry fertilizer there ever. The organic matter in that soil has gone from 1.9 to 5.4 since we bought the field. I guess the people at Growers were right with their calcium teachings over the years. So now that I have over limed many acres on my farm here in central NY, you can relax and put the lime to your soils to get the yields you need to get the returns that you want.