Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1918 — LIME IS NOT APPLIED AS FOOD FOR PLANTS. [ARTICLE]

LIME IS NOT APPLIED AS FOOD FOR PLANTS.

Lime is not an important direct food for plants, but its chief functions in the soil are to neutralize acidity and to promote bacterial activities. Leaching is the greatest source of loss of lime from. soil. Crops of corn, oats, wheat, clover and timothy in a five-year rotation at the Agricultural Experiment Station at Wooster on land receiving complete fertilizer and liine removed only about 106 pounds of calcium per acre in this time. To furnish this calcium in the plants only 265 pounds of limestone would be needed in five years. Applications of two tons of ground limestone, however, have been profitable on the Experiment Station farm. The lime is needed to correct acidity in the soil and to make conditions otherwise favordble for crops to thrive besides adding a small amount of calcium as plant food. Leaching causes the greatest loss of carbonates and basic calcium from the soil, experiments at the Station have proved. Applications of one to two tons of limestone are therefore needed about every five years on land deficient in limestone. The early American colonies made several attempts To grow alfalfa, but without great success. George Washington grew trial plats of alfalfa on his Virginia farm, and Thomas Jefferson gave considerable attention and care to its cultivation. Their efforts, however, proved unsatisfactory, since they did not understand all of the requirements for the successful growth of the plant The Bureau of Soil* is cooperating with cement mills, blast furnaces, and wool scourers with the object of enabling them to recover potash as a by product wherever this proven to be commercially feasible. j