A "Twist" of Lime

About a year ago, I collected soil samples from various spots in our pasture as well as in the garden and in the side yard where the potato patch was.  All in all, especially in the garden, the soil tests looked pretty darn good.  I attribute that to composting and soil amendments we've made in the garden.  However, we haven't composted in the pasture obviously and one thing that was low was pH.

A low reading in pH tells you that your soil is acidic.  Here's the thing to know about low pH as it pertains to trying to grow grass or many crops.  It doesn't matter how high your NPK is, all your fertility, everything good in the soil is locked up and the plants cannot use it.  What do you do to rectify this situation?  You must do what you can to raise your soil pH - make it more alkaline.

To do that, you'll want to apply lime to your soil.  I went to our local Helena Chemical office and ordered a ton of pelletized (fast acting) lime.  I borrowed a spreader cart from them and selected a day to broadcast it right before a light rain.  Here is what the pelletized lime looks like.  As opposed to Ag Lime, this will go right to work.

Since Dad has a 4WD truck, he graciously drove his truck to spread the lime in the pasture.

His tire tracks were a little hard to see in the grass, but he tried to line up 5 feet outside of the tracks to ensure an overlapping coverage.  I walked behind him to see that the lime was coming out fine and we were getting it put out.  It is not an exact science, but we were trying to get about 650 pounds to the acre.  My pasture is about 3 acres.

I walked behind the truck for a bit until the bees started buzzing around me.  I don't think they appreciated all the racket, so I got out of the way.

Once he finished, Dad dressed the corners and then entered the "bull pen."  It's a smaller pasture where we segregate the bull because, well, he's trouble.  This pasture is narrow and it was still a little wet.  I was a bit concerned that Dad would bog down, but his truck did a good job.  There's only one little spot where it was wet and his tire spun.

We got all the lime put out and returned the spreader cart.  The very next day we got a nice, slow, soaking rainfall of 0.9 inches and the following day, we got 0.9 inches again.  Not enough to cause run off, but enough to dissolve the pellets and send into the soil.  Now we'll patiently wait to see if the lime releases the NPK that was tied up to allow the grass to grow in the pasture.

Divide and Conquer

The grass in our pasture is growing with the rain that has been falling.  I'm using rotational grazing in which I have the 3 acre pasture separated into 7 different paddocks and I move them either daily or every two days into a fresh new paddock of grass, depending on how much they are eating and how fast or slow the grass is growing.  By using this technique, I'm optimizing the usage of the grass.  Joel Salatin says that cows graze like people do at a salad bar, picking out the best stuff first.  But if you limit their access to just one section of the pasture, they end up eating most everything, instead of being like that family member that picks the shrimp out of the bottom of a shrimp and okra gumbo!

Anyway, over the past 17 years, we've never fertilized our pasture, unless you count the tons of chicken manure and cow manure that have fallen over those years.  In taking soil samples, we've learned that the pH is off and we are needing lime.  In fact, we need 1 ton of lime per acre to bring the soil to an optimal 6.26 level.  Getting the soil to the correct pH will allow the soil to 'unlock' the fertility that is already their so that the grass can access it and grow.

With just a 3 acre pasture, I'm finding it hard to get someone to come and broadcast lime on such a small parcel of land.  So I thought to myself, what's the best way to eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Tractor Supply Company was running a special on lime at 3 forty lb. bags for $9.  I measured the square footage of the first paddock and did the calculations based on a ton to the acre to determine how many bags to put out.  The first paddock required 10 forty lb bags. 

I got out my spreader and got busy after work.  1 paddock down, six to go!