In the fall, apply 500 pounds of lime per acre to the poor land to be redeemed, break it and prepare it thoroughly, and seed it to rye. In the spring when the rye heads out, turn it under and sow cow peas. When the peas mature, scatter lime, 500 pounds to the acre, over them and turn them under. The lime will prevent the green stuff from souring the soil, will decompose it and fit it for plant food, and will prepare the soil to accept any other foods that may be applied. Follow the peas with wheat, or wheat and clover.
The land once redeemed, do not wear it out again, but preserve its fertility by the use of high-grade commercial fertilizers and barn-yard manure, always rotating the crops so as to get back to some leguminous crop and lime at least once every four years.
Do not retard agricultural education by making warfare on commercial fertilizers, for they are indispensable to every farmer in preserving the fertility of the soil. The world employs the use of just about one-tenth of the artificial fertilizers it should use, and about one-half of what is used is used intelligently. Make war on low grade fertilizers that have the attractive but deceiving feature of cheapness, and buy grade fertilizers by the unit under the guidance of the requirements of your soil.
Phosphatic Limestone.
The use of lime has been and is being sadly neglected, especially in the Southern States and, when it is absolutely necessary to all soils in which it does not exist or exists only in small or insufficient quantities, it does look like the move to provide it is one of imperative moment. Look at the Bluegrass Region of Tennessee and Kentucky, the fairest and most fertile of God’s country. What made it? The dissolution and weathering away of the original phosphatic limestone rock. It is strictly a limestone country and teaches one of nature’s great lessons that the agricultural world should accept and be profited thereby.
All the limestone of this region contains more or less bone phosphate of lime, and in this fact lies the whole secret. In the past ages the foliage from the thick mass of trees and other vegetable growth fell to the ground, soured, and formed an acid which immediately attacked the bone phosphate of lime and converted it into phosphoric acid, while the calcium carbonate or lime decomposed all vegetable matter and conditioned it for plant food, neutralizing all acids and stood ready itself to enter into all future and standing vegetable growth. Now the forests have given place to the cleared fields and we no longer have the dropping from the trees to enrich our soils, neither have we in our fields in sections devoid of limestone any vegetation with roots that extend deep enough in the earth to bring up the carbonate of lime sufficient to support our crops. Therefore the vegetable matter the cheapest of all manures, we provide by turning under green leguminous or nitrogen-gathering plants. These plants sour and finally decompose, but without carbonate of lime to perform its important duties of creating plant food out of this decayed matter, all the fertilizer you get from your crop is the nitrogen it has gathered from the air. Then why not use powdered Tennessee phosphatic-limestone containing enough calcium carbonate (not quick lime) to furnish desired results and no more bone phosphate of lime than will be entirely and immediately converted into plant food. If this phosphatic-limestone product is used with leguminous crops, potash is the only plant food that you will have to provide during the two crop seasons following; however, every soil that has a clay subsoil is a safe bank that will retain all you place on deposit, and if you have the money to spare, deposit it in the soil by investing in high-grade fertilizers and draw a high rate of interest on it instead of letting it stand idle. The calcium in the phosphatic limestone will absolutely correct all free acids in the commercial fertilizers, the burning, deleterious effects of which you may have experienced, and it will rectify the sourness of any and all soils.
An object lesson in favor of this phosphatic limestone is taught by riding along any turnpike macadamized with it and observing the rankness of the crops about fifty yards on either side of the pike, especially where the fields are worn and poor. This demonstrates that it is the dust blown from the roads over into the fields that makes the rank growth alongside the roads. It may be argued that the manure dropped on the pike produced the results; but if so small an amount of manure produced such wonderful results when mixed with the dust from the pike, what would be the result if you would mix all of your barn-yard manure with the powdered limestone?
Recently the writer made twelve tests or experiments with litmus paper. The first ten of these experiments were made with blue litmus paper and samples drawn from ten different fields, all of which have been under cultivation for many years and have had liberal yearly applications of acid fertilizers. The soils so tested are Alabama soils, and are decidedly acid, as shown by the bits of blue litmus turning red on coming in contact with them.
Everyone must know that it takes lime to neutralize the acids of acid soils; but comparatively few farmers ever take the trouble to find out whether or not their soils are acid, even after failing to get a catch of clover three or four years in succession. All clovers positively refuse to grow in acid soils. Inoculation will not do any good for bacteria cannot exist and operate in such soils. Sweeten the soil and nature will in most cases supply the bacteria.
Carbonate of lime enters into the frame of every plant and a lack of it will cause soft stems and flabby leaves. It improves the chemical, mechanical and biological condition of the soil. It flocculates very light, sandy soils, making them compact and capable of retaining moisture, while it prevents clayey soils from becoming pasty hard and full of cracks by causing them to crumble when dry.