The key to the successful and profitable growth of any Indiana crop is total soil fertility management!
Aglime is the key to achieving and maintaining proper soil pH, and Indiana Aglime is the best and the most natural way to achieve the correct pH for your fields. It’s a well-known fact that soil acidity reduces yield and profit potential. Unless your soil’s pH is correct, the valuable fertilizers you apply are not fully available to the crop you have planted.
How Indiana Soils Become Acidic…
When fields are not limed regularly, they become acidic. Erosion, leaching, acid rain, even the normal growing of crops all contribute. Erosion and leaching physically remove calcium and magnesium from the soil. In addition, plants naturally consume calcium and magnesium as they grow. Rain, containing debris from the burning of fossil fuels, deposits nitric and sulfuric acids into the soil. Although the annual application of nitrogen fertilizer is essential to the efficient production of many crops, its continued use actually promotes the development of acid conditions in the soil. The result… Indiana fields can quickly become acidic!
Aglime for Healthy Soils and a Better Environment!
In addition to neutralizing soil acidity, the benefits of the regular application of aglime often include the addition of needed calcium or magnesium. Further, the effectiveness of certain herbicides is enhanced and the total soil environment is made more favorable for soil organisms. All this leads to a more healthy soil condition where the potential for the leaching of harmful chemicals into your groundwater is greatly reduced or eliminated. Yes, the application of aglime is an environmental issue.
Aglime is especially critical in minimum tillage operations. Farmers who practice reduced tillage methods should test their soil and apply aglime more frequently in order to avoid surface soil acidity. This is essential to ensuring proper fertilizer efficiency and herbicide effectiveness.
Despite these facts, many Indiana growers delay liming in an effort to hold down costs. They let their soils become dangerously acidic! If you haven’t taken soil samples within the past three years, or if you haven’t limed your soils to recommended levels, you are not getting optimum crop production… or optimum farm income.
Aglime Gives You Your Money’s Worth!
Maintaining proper soil pH with aglime is a basic necessity for growing anything well. It’s the foundation upon which expensive fertilizers and some herbicides may achieve optimum results. If your soil pH is not correct, applying more fertilizer will not optimize yields and profits because your crop cannot fully utilize the nutrients in the fertilizer you purchased. Therefore, the application of aglime could increase yields as well as provide greater fertilizer efficiency to boost the profit potential of your farm.
Most Indiana crops achieve optimum yields when grown in soils which are slightly acidic to slightly alkaline. Regular application of aglime is the best way to achieve and maintain the ideal soil pH!
Effect of pH on the Yield Potential of Indiana Crops
Relative Yields at various pH levels:
Acidic Range from 1 to 6.9+ – Neutral 7.0 – Alkaline Range from 7.0+ to 14
| Crop | Acidic 4.7 | 5.0 | 5.7 | 6.8 | Neutral 7.0 | Alkaline 7.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corn | 34% | 73% | 83% | 100% | 85% | |
| Soybeans | 65% | 79% | 80% | 100% | 93% | |
| Wheat | 68% | 76% | 89% | 100% | 85% | |
| Oats | 77% | 93% | 99% | 98% | 100% | |
| Barley | 0% | 23% | 80% | 95% | 100% | |
| Sweet Clover | 0% | 2% | 49% | 89% | 100% |
Sources: A & L Mid West Agricultural Laboratories, Inc. Omaha, Nebraska
Test Your Soil Regularly!
Conducting soil tests on every field of your farm at least once every three years (and applying aglime when you need it) is the only way you can be sure that your fields do not become acidic.
Remember, aglime is not an instant fix. Depending on the gradation of the aglime available in your area, the time required for aglime to have its full impact upon the pH of your soil may be one to three years.
Your soil fertility consultant or fertilizer dealer can make an aglime application recommendation required to achieve the optimum pH for your crops.
The Best Time To Lime…
Fall and early winter applications are recommended even if tillage operations are not performed until the spring. Early spring is also a good time to spread aglime. Because aglime reacts with soil on contact, applying aglime at any time is better than delaying the application for another year.
Call Your Indiana Aglime Council…We’re Here To Help!
The Aglime Council of Indiana is a not-for-profit organization of aglime producers. Its members are dedicated to providing the highest quality aglime. In addition, The Council publishes aglime application information, research findings and other facts to help growers achieve optimum yields. Each year, the Aglime Council publishes a free analysis of the purity and chemical composition of the aglime produced by each of its participating members.
