Lowes has Gypsum at $1.80 a bag where I live. Is the calcium in Gypsum good for Peaches & apples? How much to apply and when? Anyone tried Gypsum on there lawns? Does it really work?
Do you know the approximate pH of your soil? That determines if limestone or gypsum might be the best bet. I’d say you need a soil test to get a good answer.
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Fruitnut is right. In the humid regions soil is more commonly acid but in the arid west it tends to be alkaline- but a pH test is not hard to get and without it you won’t know how much to apply. You can probably take a sample to your cooperative extension if you don’t want to do it yourself. There’s usually someone in the office that can do it for you while you wait in my county. Every county has one so you can google it for info.
Also check the Calcium present in your soils. Out here in the West adding more Calcium is often a poor idea.
In most places in my yard the PH was 6.2 - it goes up in a few spots, nothing greater than a 6.7. How do I check the Calcium level? I didn’t think gypsum changed the PH of the soil - only Limestone did that.
My soil is red clay compacted dirt. I am in the Piedmont region of Virginia.
That’s an ideal pH for most fruit trees so you don’t need limestone. A soil test will give you calcium levels. That’s the only way you’ll know if you need more. You are right gypsum doesn’t affect soil pH.
Unless you have a soil test indicating low Ca or Ca deficiency symptoms I don’t see any reason to add gypsum.
Or just call your cooperative extension and see what the story is with your soil type in your area. I’ve planted in a thousand different sites and managed a 100+ orchards in most of the soil types available within 100 miles of me (right up the the sea shore) and I’ve never had a single tree show signs of calcium deficiency- I believe it is rather uncommon in soils in the proper pH range.
“Calcium deficiency usually occurs In loam and clay soils only when they are acidic” says the university of Florida.
Here’s another opinion that I think is a bit eccentric and not nearly as reliable as university guidelines. I post it only to continue the discussion. Wondering if anyone has specific experience to back up the writers suggestions. He suggests that pH is not so important with blueberries or rhodies, only the existence of adequate magnesium in the soil, which I’m pretty sure is somewhat bonkers.
Hello neighbor! I’m in piedmont region of NC. Red clay is common here where the old timers call it “tobacco land.” Gypsum does not impact the PH but it does add Calcium and Sulfur to the soil and helps to improve the tilth of red clay soils. It’s often used on peanuts in eastern NC where its cheap and sold in bulk. I would like to try some on my apples to see if it will get the Ca level in the soil up, but in my area its only available in bags at a high price. In NC and VA, Ca is often added to the normal cover spray program on apples. Its a lot cheaper and works much faster than adding gypsum to the soil.
Here in VA you can send a soil sample to VA Tech and I think for $5 they will do an analysis and make recommendations.
No experience on this, but I have often read in introductory type soil text books that gypsum only textually improves sodic clays, typical of parts of CA such as delta lands. .
Gypsum is widely used here in CO, especially on the plains where clay soils are common. It does improve clay soils’ texture and as such would be a reasonable choice if SpudDaddy’s soil needed either Ca or S.
Basically you have two main choices: Find out what the general makeup is for your soils and see if adding more Ca or S would be a good idea. Or send some in and get it analyzed. If you do go the analyze it route, then you have a variety of types of analysis to choose from. My personal choice for stuff like this is a lab that does Albrecht style analysis, with CEC numbers for the cation elements. The advange there is in addition to lbs per Ac of an element, they also have specific target CEC percentages for the various elements, so you can see if you need more or less of any of them.
Typically though, clay soils are high in Mg and low in Ca. But best to get a test rather than work of “usually”.
High pH influences other things, like iron and manganese availability. These two metals are much more available at low pH. Plants that grow in acidic soils tend to not have the chelators and don’t secrete reducing agents (or work with fungi/bacteria that do so) to take up Mn and Fe in high pH conditions. The classic example here in IA are pin oak and river birch which are commonly chloritic when grown on upland soils. In my opinion this is partly due to high pH and also partly due to drainage decreasing the amount of the root zone that experiences reducing conditions and formation of soluble iron in the Fe2+ form. Manganese is similar, and is more soluble under reducing conditions as Mn2+ than in oxic conditions where it is mainly as insoluble Mn3+ and Mn4+ oxides.
Thanks all for the comments and different observations. Let me find my local county agriculture agent and send off a soil sample to VT. Forgot to add earlier - the Lowes Gypsum bags are for 30 lbs bags @ 1.80.
Did you read the article? I believe he takes into account the greater availability of given nutrients related to pH.
I did but probably not well enough. I was mostly looking for the context of the Mg comment. After going back and reading it let my answer serve as a specific example…