Field pH, liming, ash, etc.

[spookypony]

I'm guessing very strongly that my main paddock needs some sort of pH balancing: the presence of 3 equines in a fairly small space, at the very least, is causing copious urine damage. I'm not overly bothered by the relative absence of grass, since it's easier to manage metabolically-challenged animals if you can control their forage, but would like to take better care of it. So, a horde of questions ensues:

1. how do I get the soil tested as to need? Are there kits I can use at home? (Somehow suspect it's a bit more complicated than testing a swimming pool?)

2. if it needs liming (which I gather is ideally done in the fall), then how is that usually accomplished in a small paddock? Can I do it by hand?

3. I gather that wood ash can conceivably be used as a lime substitute. Coal ash is presumably a bad idea! If I were to start burning wood in my fire instead of coal (it's a back-boiler system), then could I use the ashes from that for my paddock?

4. as an aside, where am I meant to get rid of my coal ash, anyway?

5. if the soil were to be too alkaline, I assume I can't just dump gallons of lemonade on top of it ...what happens then?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Poo Picker]

Not sure if it is different in Scotland but here in the SW most farm supplies merchants offer PH testing of soil samples they also advise on how much lime per acre is needed. Lime comes in a powder form which you need to spread with a tractor and I think you may need a license. But the granulated stuff is much easier to deal with we spread ours with a spinner on the back of a quad but think you could do by hand. Hope this helps?

 

[Polos Mum]

You can buy a soil ph testing kit for under £10 in any B&Q/ Hoebase type place. Or for £30 ish you can send off a soil sample for full analysis which would tell you about nutrient levels as well as ph.

I'd then speak to local farmer and see if when they are doing their fields the'll pop into yours on the way past. I assume its 3 or 4 acres which to do by hand would be a huge task!!

 

[spookypony]

Thanks both!

Polos Mum, no, it's more like 0.75 acre!

 

[Bennions Field]

As others have said you can get ph testing kits from gardening centres, very easy to do but iwas told by soil testing lab to make up a bucket of about 10 -20little bits of soil from around the field and mix up well then test one small part of that, it's then going to give you a good idea of the overall ph, depending on the result you then add lime to make the soil more neutral if it's too acidic, I have looked at calcifert, it's a pelleted type lime, works out really cost effective on small acrerage, I have 4 acres, and it's safe to do by hand, for your size paddock it might be worth looking on eBay for a push along spreader or you could do by hand, they do the stuff in 25kg bags too, I was tlc I would need 600kg for my 4 acres, worked out an awfull lot cheaper then powdered lime I think it was around £140/150 including del and vat, the small bags were little more expensive, but for your size paddock you will struggle to get small enough quantities with powdered lime, they would also have to stay off the grazing for a while with the powdered version, but can continue to graze with calcifert, I'm also unable to move mine off for a few weeks so it works out a much better option, going to do mine myself with my fertiliser spreader, got it off ebayfor £40 been worth it's weight in gold! Done two years of fertilising already and the neighbours have used it too - I borrowed their mini weed sprayer to kill the buttercups in return

 

[horsedreams]

We got our soil analysis from

http://www.progreen.co.uk/Soil-anal...Soil-Analysis-for-horse-grazing/prod_418.html

paid online they send out sample bag free postage and we had to take samples from different parts of the field

the results were back via email in 3 days then they rang us to discuss our results and advised what we needed (very good service)

we also thought our ph was down but turned out just slightly low it was our sodium and potasium that was very low