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Lime

Lime
Posted by Selena from NJ/6 on 2001-04-05 14:02:58

Can anyone tell me exactly what does adding powdered lime do to your soil quality? While visiting the larger home improvement stores, I see that many of them have lime on sale in the gardening section.

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    Lime
    Posted by Kimm from 4a/5b - MI on 2001-04-06 08:00:54

    Lime helps "tie up" the free hydrogen radical that casues your soil pH to drop and provides, depending on whether you add calcitic or dolomitic, provides either calcium or magnesium, and may help balance the cation exchange capacity that determines the availability of plant nutrients. So whether to add lime to your soil should not be a "well I guess I'll add some lime this year" thing but based on tests that tell which of the two need to be added. Adding one or the other without a good idea of which really needs to be added can cause more porbelms than it will solve.
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      lime
      Posted by Selena from NJ - Zone 6 on 2001-04-10 11:48:33

      Thanks Kimm,

      You know I was at a friends house last week and was telling her my soil problems. And she said, "Just add some lime and the problems be gone."

      I'm glad I asked, because her cure-for-all didn't sound exactly right to me.
      Thanks again.
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