Calcium

When I first became interested in gardening and farming in a serious, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life” sort of way, I had no idea what the soil needed as far as fertility management was concerned. Of course, being 12 years old I didn’t have much experience so couldn’t be expected to know all that much about such things even though I had worked in the garden with my grandmother and mother since the first summer after I was born. I guess I would have been about 5 months old when mom set me down in the garden and I ate dirt, or so they tell me. I remember none of it! Wow, I just smacked the first mosquito of the year, isn’t this a bit early for those miserable creatures to be out.

By the time I started really getting interested about all I knew was that you put manure on the garden in the spring, tilled it in really well, threw all of the rocks out and planted seeds. Then you weeded the beds until harvest time. That was all it took to have a prize winning garden in the spot we had ours, watering was unheard of, in fact, last summer was the first time I have ever really watered a garden in my entire life. I suppose living in a rainforest helped a little with the watering requirements, 140 inches of rain per year makes for more mud than dust I can assure you!

When I decided that husbandry ( I like that word much better than farming) was what I was going to spend my life doing I got all of my grandmothers gardening books and almost memorized them, then I cleared out the library shelves of every book on the subject, 50 books at a time, which was the limit. I taught myself to read at a very young age (mom helped a lot I am sure, she always read to me) and am a fairly fast reader so I read like a fanatic, hiding in every imaginable location from under the house to up in a tree, when riding my bike (I built an awful looking device for my handlebars that would hold the book) when I was supposed to be sleeping (lots of flashlight batteries) and when I was supposed to be doing school. Basically everywhere but in the car because I cannot read in the car, well, the vans we had back then, I can read in the Mercedes but not in much else. To say that I love reading is the understatement of the century. I finally exhausted the gardening/farming section at the library about the time we moved and I got a new library to go through!

With all of that reading I have learned a little bit about growing things, though not nearly enough because it’s been a long time and I have forgotten things or just don’t have the experience that is worth an awful lot of good books. Now I know a little bit about fertilizers and how they work, soil nutrition, soil micro life and other such things. I know I was never going to go to college and get an agronomy degree so I had to do it on my own. I wish I knew someone who could have taught me instead of me having to dig through all kinds of superfluous stuff, but it is nice to now at least know where to find the information when I have a question.

Enough of that, I wanted to write about specific elements in a healthy soil system. What I’ll try to do is write about single things so I don’t go on and on and on until I put everyone to sleep as well as wear out my keyboard on the first posting. I can’t do it all at once, but I’ll see how often I can write about one thing or another. This is mostly so I get the information cemented in my thinking instead of just floating around in there somewhere. Right now if someone were to ask me about just about anything I would be at a complete loss even though I know that I know about the issue. Writing or teaching about something is one of the best ways to learn about that something so I’ll put it to work here.

Calcium is often called the King of Elements because it is needed more than any other element by weight and volume. It is the foundation of all biological systems and is often the most limiting factor in soils, which is why I am writing about calcium first! Calcium is one of nature’s best detoxifiers and it is key to countering heavy metal contamination such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and aluminum from poor quality commercial fertilizers and waste products. Calcium is the component that gives a living cell it’s capacitor characteristic, without this working properly the cell functions poorly, resulting in degeneration, disease and eventual death. Calcium is often in the soil in large amounts, such as is the case on my farm north of here. The subsoil is practically a calcium carbonate bed, on typical soil tests the reading is 12 times too much calcium. The plants tell me that there is a calcium deficiency (blossom end rot, grass weeds, etc.). What is the deal? The deal is that the calcium is not functional. It’s locked up and cannot be used by the plants. This is a case of balance, which is key in all areas of agriculture as well as human health. I don’t have room to go into all of the aspects of balance but I’ll give some examples, for instance; if there is a phosphorus deficiency calcium cannot work properly or if there is excess sodium then calcium is tied up and unavailable to the plants. One quick way to release a little bit of the tied up or unavailable calcium in a soil is to do a light application of calcium, either to the soil or in the case of a growing crop, as a liquid foliar spray. The small amount of calcium you put on has an energetic effect, which releases a little calcium in the soil for the plants to use at that point. It is not a permanent solution to the problem but it will help in a pinch. The goal should be to correct the imbalances so the plants can utilize what God has given in the soil instead of spending a lot of money on band-aids.

Another common thing is a real deficiency of calcium in the soil. Most people find out they have a deficiency and immediately call the fertilizer plant and have them send in a long row of trucks full of lime without thinking any further. This has been the case for over a hundred years and these guys are still calling in the lime trucks. Usually this is dolomite lime and their soils are looking more like a parking lot than anything else. Ever wonder why the grandfathers sit around talking about how they used to farm 500 acres with a little rear wheel drive 30 horsepower gas tractor with less than 100 ft pounds of torque and 3 bottom plow? Today that would be absolutely unheard of. Granted, most guys farm more than 500 acres around here but even the guys doing twice that absolutely must have two 400 horsepower 8 wheel drive diesel tractors with well over a thousand ft pounds of torque to pull their rippers and chisel plows, forget about a moldboard plow, it’s too much to get through the field! Why 13-14 times the power to farm twice the land?

I’ll probably write about magnesium another time so I won’t go into detail now, I’ll just say that I think a contributing factor (along with anhydrous ammonia, television and tractor salesmen) is the fact that many people spread dolomite lime like it was going out of style. Dolomite is Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Chloride; basically, it’s very high in magnesium, which makes a wonderful hardpan. I’ll explain that later. One reason that the fertilizer companies may have pushed the high magnesium lime is that magnesium, in the recommended amounts, creates a nitrogen instability, making the nitrogen needs skyrocket! Of course all of the commercial nitrogen fertilizers are made from natural gas; someone is making a lot of money off of the high magnesium recommendations. More nitrogen fertilizer needed which uses a tremendous amount of natural gas as well as having to use more fuel working the much harder soils. Do you think an oil company may be involved?

Ok, back to calcium.

Instead of blindly applying truckloads of calcium in any form, the thinking farmer will ask, “Why isn’t the calcium there now?” Unfortunately, calcium gets up and walks away very easily, especially in sandy or low organic matter soils unless there is something there to hold it where you want it, and carbon is that something. You may want to know what I consider a low organic matter soil. In order to even start holding calcium you need at least 2-4 % organic matter, which is almost impossible to find on farms anymore. Years ago the soils around here were about 6% OM. But that has dropped to less than 1% on most farms because of poor management.

So what are some carbon sources that we can use to hold the calcium until we can get the organic matter levels up to a level that will hold the calcium? Sugar will work, regular white powdered sugar, powdered as fine as possible so it will stick to the calcium as you apply it; powdered lignite coal will work well too. You don’t need a whole lot either, measure in pounds not tons.

So what are some sources of calcium? Plain, common limestone is probably the cheapest source and most commonly used. (CaCO3, so really, it’s just calcium carbonate. One reason to study the chemical symbols in school! With 3 carbon molecules it’s a pretty stable form of calcium.)

Aragonite, which is just ground up seashells, is a very high quality form of CaCO3.

Dehydrated lime, which is Calcium Oxide, is not a very good source.

Hydrated lime, (Calcium Hydroxide) is sold as quick lime and I don’t recommend it at all.

Gypsum, (Calcium sulfate) is good in many soils, especially in those needing sulfur because gypsum has sulfur in the sulfate form which is the form that should be used. .

Soft Rock Phosphate is 35% calcium so you get calcium and phosphate at the same time.

Dolomite lime. I wouldn’t use it if someone gave it to me. It is really cheap so lots of people use it.

Bone meal is 18% calcium and is held in the soil because it is slow release.

One of the fun things that calcium will do is flocculate clay soils, which nicely drains wet spots and loosens hardpans. My farm up north is almost one solid wet spot but unfortunately I haven’t been able to fully cover the place with enough calcium to do the job of flocculating the clay, though things have really improved.

To see how it works, picture how clay looks through a microscope, it’s in little plates like scales. In a tight, slippery soil the clays are laying flat together like scales on a fish and are held this way energetically, like magnets. When proper calcium levels are present it’s like changing the magnets around so the clays look like this –l-l-l- instead of like this lllll. As you can see, this opens the soil and allows proper capillary water and element flow through the soil from deep down, effectively adding many feet of depth to your usable soil base as well as allowing subsoil moisture up to the roots and excess surface water to drain into the subsoil, it also breaks up hardpans much better than using a ripper or other machine. In order to do this you need a minimum of 1,000 pounds, preferably 2,000 pounds of available calcium per acre measured on the Reams test. Notice that this has to be available calcium, locked up calcium doesn’t count.

I hope this is enough of an introduction of calcium to get those who are interested in growing things started in learning more about calcium and how it works and relates to other elements in the soil. There’s a lot more to learn so don’t stop here, get some books and start reading!