- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
It takes a long while (and a lot of tramped in OM) before pH will stabilise without lime[emoji23]
What’s lime per ton now £28-30?
Cheap when you compare it to poorer crop and grass yields.
Rough rule of thumb, we've "wasted" about 4 tons of dry matter each year for the last 3 years to raise pH from 5.6 to 6.1, so that puts lime as a very cheap input for an extractive farming system - SOM has risen from about 8% to about 11%, hence the free hydrogens have much more humus to attach to, the same effect as adding carbonate via lime.
You simply cannot replicate this if using synthetic fert, so lime is an absolute must for most farms - as @silverfox says if you need told this basic stuff, then you should be outski