Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Lynda wrote:

> Drought areas don't have much to do with alkaline vs. acidic.  We're in what 
> would be called a permanent drought area and the soil is very acid.
>
>  
I think this is just an error in logic.  Leaching eventually causes 
acidity, but the lack of it does not necessarily cause alkalinity.  You 
can readily observe in a limestone cavern how the ground water has been 
leaching calcium from the surface and redepositing it deep underground.  
OTOH, in the desert, and in my greenhouse, alkalinity builds up because 
alkaline metals are applied in the irrigation water, but there's never 
enough water to rinse them away, or they just rinse into a dry creek and 
downhill to some other spot in the desert (or the low spots in the 
greenhouse, where the white is).

The sources of stable alkalinity as the column I and II metals: sodium, 
potassium, calcium, and magnesium.  For instance, many areas in Europe 
have a thick layer of limestone from ancient deposits of seashells. The 
volcanic regions that you and I live in don't have that.  Unfortunately 
that's why our area isn't going to become the next France, 
agriculturally.  So that's a second way that a soil becomes acidic, 
simply by being born without any of these metals to start with.

Bill
S. Oregon coast