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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Clay,gypsum,cobalt

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  • From: Joe and Ellen Hecksel <jhecksel@voyager.net>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Clay,gypsum,cobalt
  • Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 15:46:21 -0500

Hi Del:
I have been considering amending my clay hill apple orchard with gypsum but wonder how to apply it. Considering clay's nature I would think that a surface application, say a ton per acre, would never get down into the clay to do its work. I would think it would have to be worked down deep with heavy equipment prior to planting. Can surface application work?


I think surface application can work....just not very quickly Wet clay, being a large percentage water by volume, is actively worked by the freeze-thaw cycle. It is also "worked" by dry-wet cycling. Note the cracks that show up in clay when it dries. These mechanisms are pretty much free of charge or effort on your part.

A third mechanism is that some plants will punch through the clay with fleshy roots. Those roots provide active transport channels as they decay and bug life chews their way down. These biological mechanisms do require some effort and intelligence on your part. Examples: Planting appropriate cover crops. Adding organic matter to feed the soil life.

You need to know that I am a lazy person. I am a disciple of Scattergood Baines. I would take $99 out of the ATM rather than $100 if I could, simply so I would not have to move my finger so much. So I am very much inclined to error on the side of easy-does-it. Bear that in mind as you read.

Some of what you do depends on how things are growing for you. I would respond differently if my trees were dying as opposed to living and growing but not thriving. Dying trees demand more drastic, invasive action. Failure-to-thrive means you can be more incremental in your approach and maybe make minor adjustments in your orchard management or use what you have learned about rootstock choices when making replacements.

Like Mr. London, I don't know if aggressively incorporating gypsum is the best choice. Clay tends to be rich in aluminum (one of the LMs). Aluminum becomes soluble at lower pH, that is, more acid soils. Gypsum is CaSO4 (calcium sulphate) and tends to lower pH. As a point of reference, alum is AlKSO4, or aluminum-potassium-sulphate and it reacts with protein enough so that it is used to tan hides into leather. Bacterial life has protein cell walls.


Secondly, during the last Nafex conference a knowledgeable grower strongly recommended cobalt as the solution to breaking up clay.


Cobalt is a *trace* nutrient essential for the bacterial synthesis of one of the B vitamins. I suppose that adding cobalt in extremely minute quantities would be a good thing if you had absolutely no cobalt in your soil. However, it strains the imagination to think that Minnesota weather is aggressive enough to leach all cobalt from the soil the glaciers gnawed off the Precambrian shield a mere 10,000 years ago.

Besides, cobalt is very expensive. Nobody has enough money to use it as a commodity agricultural chemical. Del, I know you are a mechanically inclined kind of guy. You could probably get enough cobalt by brazing an M-42 HSS drill bit to one tine of your rototiller (attempt at humor).

I have no idea what level of application, and would not want to over appply. Does it work with ions as well, or some other mechanism?
Del




--
-Joe Hecksel
My personal web site: http://my.voyager.net/~jhecksel
"We are only here for a short time. So let's make it a good time."
-Cary Dye 1958-2002






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