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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: home made fertilizer
  • Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:13:49 -0800


on 3/21/01 8:04 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. at lflondon@mindspring.com
wrote:

> Why would anyone want to add more lime that that needed to adjust pH?

Dr. William Albrecht's discovery was that much of the benefit ascribed to
lime's creation of a neutral pH was actually due to the calcium in lime. He
showed that crops believed to require a neutral pH, such as alfalfa and some
of the clovers, grew just fine on acid soil when calcium was added in the
form of gypsum or rock phosphate. So he feels that sometimes you may need to
add more calcium, or in a different form, than that required only to raise
the pH.

Acres USA has a several-volume set of his work, "The Albrecht Papers." I've
got the first volume, which has lots of useful information on the whole
"insoluble but available" approach to nutrients that he took, including much
info on calcium. He is, I will warn you, a tedious and repetitive writer,
but it's worth it. It also has a pretty good section on Cation Exchange
Capacity (CEC).

Toby





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