Using "wild" chalk instead of Garden Lime

[dave_norm_smith]

Hi

Are you sure thats not goldust in that box from Wyvale? I paid about £1.50 for a 2kg bag from my small independant garden centre last year. But in regards to being cheap, even at £5.99 its still cheaper than the fine you would get if some official bod took exception to the chalk being removed. I have no opinions either way as to whether you take it or not, afterall its not my chalk.

Phone the quarry or local farmer and ask them if you can have a bag of the rubble, that way your covered just in case?

Dave

[StephenH]

I don't live in a chalk area, but thanks for the reminder - I must buy some lime today from B&Q!

[King Carrot]

Dolomite has more magnesium than calcium - I suppose that's why.

I checked up just now and Dolomite lime is actually more like half calcium and half magnesium.

I would hazzard a guess and say direct contact, or if tatties were below limed ground the infusion washed down upon them could do it. My auld Dad always used to put a couple of handfulls of peat around each seed tuber and this kept them from scabbing, even though the land they were in was alkaline.

I think I will try adding some lime well underneath a small patch of my spuds just to see any effect it has, the new spuds should form well above the lime.

[timethatthetaleweretold]

Hi
Are you sure thats not goldust in that box from Wyvale? I paid about £1.50 for a 2kg bag from my small independant garden centre last year. But in regards to being cheap, even at £5.99 its still cheaper than the fine you would get if some official bod took exception to the chalk being removed.
Dave

Yup, 5.99 for a carton. THe only size they had.
When i was a little kid i used to pick up lumps of wild chalk to draw on the road or paving stones.
I got no trouble for either the environmental degredation or the graffitti.

But, putting away chidish things, i think you're right about asking permission.

[Snadger]

I checked up just now and Dolomite lime is actually more like half calcium and half magnesium.



I think I will try adding some lime well underneath a small patch of my spuds just to see any effect it has, the new spuds should form well above the lime.

Sorta defeats the object dunnit? Lime is easily washed out of the land, thats why to keep an acid area neutral/alkaline you have to keep liming the surface each year and let it wash through.

If you put it BELOW your tatties, by the time they are harvested it will be washed well below accessable levels for any follow on crop I would think.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Builders lime 'hydrated lime' is the same stuff in a different bag.

Many many years ago I worked as a fitter at ICI Tunsted in Buxton one of the largest quarries in europe at that time.

The hydrated lime bagging plant had a supply of many different bags so that if a customer wanted lime from Tunsted its trade name was LIMBUX and that was the bags used. There was another bag with a stag on but memory fades and I can't remember what quarry that was supposed to be.

Many of the allotment associations requested their favourite lime from their quarry of choice, what they got was the same product in a different bag.

Colin.

[King Carrot]

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Sorta defeats the object dunnit? Lime is easily washed out of the land, thats why to keep an acid area neutral/alkaline you have to keep liming the surface each year and let it wash through.

If you put it BELOW your tatties, by the time they are harvested it will be washed well below accessable levels for any follow on crop I would think.

This is a patch I only grow spuds on because it's got trees on all four sides. Until the leaf canopy practically covers it in late June the spuds grow really well - I just try to get them started early and on the whole harvested early. I've been growing spuds in this place for a couple of years and seem to have found a reasonably sucessful method. I want to see if the lime below, in anyway helps the potato yield at all.