Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1908-04-18
TO USE LIME OR LIMESTONE
There Is Much Difference OF
Opinion as to What Form
Is Best for Land.
BY w. F. MASSEY.

|
| sion among those most qualified to
consider whether it is best to use the
caustic, freshly slaked lime, or that
which has become carbonated by ex-
posture to the air. Then of late those
who favor the lime carbonate have
been urging the use of pulverized lime
stone as a better material than the
burnt lime.
When doctors disagree the practical
farmers are very eXcusable for having
different opinions In fact, there is no
one question that needs the attention
OF the stations more than the study Of
lime and limestone and their effects
and offices in the soil.
l have had serious doubts in regard
to the value of the pulverized lime
stone as means for restoring the al
! kalinity of a soil that has become acid,
and believe that it will be much
slower in doing this than the water
slaked lime. But that this pulverized
limestone may have considerable value
l have been led to think from observing
some facts that l have stumbled on
here.
The country around the city of Sails
bury, Md, is a level, sandy, piney-
woods soil, in many places deep sand.
The roads for several miles out from
town have been macadamiZed with
oyster shells, about the purest form of
lime carbonate.
| have noticed in driving over these
smooth roads that where the wheels
have packed the shells and powdered
the surface on each side of the shelled
part of the road down to the drainage
ditch there is fine sod of bluegrass.
AS soon as one passes beyond the
shelled road there is the old, deep,
sandy road and no grass of any kind.
Now, what has caused that border of
grass on the shelled road?
The seed has evidently been washed
there from the wagons passing and has
found conditions favorable to it's
growth which do not exist on the I'M
improved road.
Bluegrass is native to the limestone
soils of Kentucky, or at least if not
native it has found it's best conditions
| there. 1t seems then that the wash of
the pulverized shells has made condi-
tons in that sandy soil that have ia
vored the growth of bluegrass, while
on the unimproved parts of the road
there are no such favorable conditions
and no grass consequently.
| Many years ago observed another
instance showing the value of the pull
/ verified shells. On the shores of the
Chesapeake bay there are numerous
deposits of oyster shells called Indian
shell banks. The Indian must have
been an enormous consumer of oysters
| if these banks are the remains of his
feasts.
In one place high up the bay and
above where any oysters now exist and
thirty feet above the water level there
is a great bank of shells covering a
number of acres on a point between a
creek flowing into the bay and the bay
| shore. These shells are five or more
| feet deep, and though thousands of
bushels have been used for lime burn
ing, the supply seems inexhaustible.
At the time 1 write about the owner
of the farm on which this shell bank
lies sold to several of his neighbors the
right to haul shells from it for lime
| burning for number of years. The
majority of them hauled the shells and
burnt the lime.
One man, instead of hauling the
shells, took a gravel screen there and
sifted them and took only the finer de-
composed particles and spread them on
his land just as one would spread shell
mari.
1t was a noticeable fact that this
man got better results on his land
and grew finer crops of clover than
those who burnt the shells into lime
AS the shell bank is covered with a
growth of massive red cedars and some
soil had accumulated from the organic
decay above, this man got some things
and others did not.
In fact, he got some of the humus
containing nitrogen and had conditions
in his soil favorable to its nitrifica-
ton. These shells, lying there for un-
told centuries, had very largely decom-
posed and the screening left only the
hard and undecomposed part for his
neighbors to haul and burn. All of
them had good enough results to album
dainty pay them for the expense, but
the man who used only the finer parts
had but the busting to do and the
hauling of a more concentrated article
and got better results than those who
went to the further expense of burn
ing the shells.
l am of the opinion that if some one
would establish a plant for the pull
veriZation of the shells that are so
! abundant on the Chesapeake, and are
also found in great banks about the
packing houses where the oysters are
canned, that the use of pulverized
shells would become common The
! only objection aside from their being
more slowly the means of sweeting an
acid soil is that in the present scarcity
of labor there is more labor involved in
the hauling of large quantity of the
pulveriZed shells or pulverized lime
stone than in hauling the smaller guam
tity of burnt lime that would be need
ed. Still there is no doubt but that a
heavy application of this pulverized
material would make more lasting i'm
provement than the lining alone.
Over half a century ago the late Ed
mund Ruffin of Virginia wrote a book
on lining entitled "Calcareous Ma
nures." Ruffin had ideas far in adj
vance of his day and his book has been
of great value to Virginia farmers.
He had a farm on the Pamunkey
river which was badly run down. He
covered this land heavily with the de-
| composed shells, known as shell mari,
which was abundant in that section. If