spreading lime

[ethalernull]

i have been on the hunt for a drop spreader for applying lime and other dry amendments to our vegetable fields but have still not found any close-by. i’m wondering if anyone relies solely on a manure spreader for adding minerals by incorporating minerals into your compost/manure or by top dressing a load before you spread it. any input on the pros and cons of this process is helpful, thanks!

evan

[Livewater Farm]

Evan I use my manure spreader for appling wood ash as well as compost and raw manure
works just fine
some time s with woodash or lime just add a layer of hay or some other material to bottom of spreader before adding ammmendment so it will move along the spreader chain and not float over the bars
Bill

[Crabapple Farm]

I’ve heard that lime can kill your compost if you do it wrong. Won’t necessarily damage the chemical fertility aspect, but can mess up the biological aspect. So if you look at compost/manure as NPK, mixing lime in works. If you look at it as a soil inoculant, maybe not so much.

I would not recommend mixing an acre’s worth of hydrated lime into an acre’s worth of compost – that much lime in that quantity of compost would be pretty caustic and probably would kill off biology. Especially if you weren’t spreading and tilling in immediately.
Emptying some bags on top of each load, spreading, and tilling in promptly would probably be okay – by the time the lime has reacted with much of the compost you’ve already got the soil to buffer it. It’s also easier to calibrate your application rate and get an even spread if you put some on top of each load. It would be pretty hard to mix it into a pile evenly.
Adding lime to the bedding in your barn a little at a time is an old practice, and in that instance, you’re not going to overload the microbial systems the way you would if you added it all to the pile at one time. But it’s a lot harder to figure out your “application rate.”
Something like greensand or rock phosphate is not as chemically reactive so wouldn’t worry me as much. Lime also comes in different types, some more reactive than others. I know that Living Acres up in Maine adds phosphorus to their compost piles in order to improve nitrogen (and I think Carbon) retention, so if you do it right feeding the pile rather than the field can boost other nutrient cycles.

For micronutrients, I like to run them through a digestive system by providing them as mineral supplements for livestock, rather than applying them to the fields. I think they go further that way. I’m not looking to correct any specific deficiencies, I just keep Kelp, Redmond Salt, and usually another mineral mix available free choice.
We’ve got a decent sized flock of laying hens, who get oyster shells as their free choice supplement, making their compost high in Calcium – I haven’t had it tested, but I always figure that their manure has the lime already mixed in.

-Tevis

[Kevin Cunningham]

It is hard to find nice functional drop spreaders because most farmers didn’t clean them out and they rust out quickly. We had one on loan from a neighbor but he just took it back because we haven’t used it for several years. It was nice right after we bought the farm because we applied a lot of lime to adjust ph, but now we simply add lime to our bedding pack. We certainly are not adding the quantity that we used to but since that lime works in the compost it seems to be more available and it don’t wash away as readily. I would not add the large amounts that we spread with the drop spreader. We also are of the thought that if we keep the minerals up in our animals then that will slowly, but steadily effect the soil. I think that is the key, it may not be the big change all at once but the steady gradual change that has the greatest effect.

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