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Large plants have been established in various parts of the country for the purpose of crushing limestone for use on land, and quite recently low-priced pulverizers for farm use have come upon the market and are meeting a wide need. Low-Priced Pulverizers. A serious drawback to the liming of land is the transportation charge that must be paid where no available stone can be found in the region.
Crops Favored by Lime. Nearly all staple farm crops respond to applications given acid soils. Corn, oats, timothy, potatoes and many other crops have considerable power of resistance to acids, but give increased yields when lime is present. Liming is not recommended for potatoes because it furnishes conditions favorable to a disease which attacks this crop.
In Scotland, no doubt, our chief purifying material is lime, although I know that several of our friends have for some time been using oxide of iron, and perhaps they will favor us with their experience and a statement of the relative cost of lime and oxide. I am not aware that either the Hawkins method or the Cooper coal liming process has yet received a trial from any Scotch gas engineer.
Interest in liming might well have been due to the amendment of all this soil, but the rational use of lime that has been the subject of much study in the last quarter of a century concerns chiefly great areas that probably could have been kept in alkaline condition and friendly to the clovers for a long time despite a short natural supply as compared with the content of our limestone lands.
If such land could be given the characteristics of a limestone soil so far only as the lime factor is concerned, the building up of fertility would be relatively easy. Liming must form the foundation of a new order of things.
This most valuable pasture grass may withstand the encroachments of weeds for a long time when lime is not abundant, if plant food is not in scant supply, but dependable sods of this grass are made only in an alkaline soil. Heavy liming of an acid soil pays when a seeding to permanent pasture is made, and old sods on land unfit for tillage may be given a new life by a dressing.
Water rendered impure by contaminations from dyehouses and some chemical works can be best purified, and most cheaply, by simple liming, followed by a settling process. If space is limited and much water is required, instead of the settling reservoirs, filtering beds of coke, sand, etc., may be used.
There is, for instance, a not small portion of Lord Inchiquin's and Lord Kenmare's land, which has been allowed by the tenants to gradually go back to sedge, if not to bog, for the want of keeping drains clear and putting on lime. A curious instance of the effect of not liming the land is supplied on one of the fields newly reclaimed by Mr. Hegarty.
While there is acid-resistant power, this clover responds to liming. Crimson Clover. Among lime-loving plants crimson clover has a rightful place, but it makes fairly good growth where the lack of lime is marked. Bluegrass. The heaviest bluegrass sods are found where lime is abundant in the soil.
The chief purpose of liming land is to provide a base with which acid may combine, so that the soil may be friendly to plant life. Lime has little power to distribute itself through a soil, and harmful acid may remain only a few inches distant from the point where lime has been placed. In a general way, the tendency of lime is downward, especially when the application at the surface is heavy.
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