A pretty basic question for the ground under our feet. Plus, Dr. Dan Davidson explains Calcium Compartmentalization below. What is Soil? By Dr. Dan Davidson, Agronomist & Farmer When you pick up a hand full of soil did you ever think about what it contains? Soil contains minerals, organic matter,...
Building The Perfect Soil
Farmers want a good soil. But after decades of farming, they are left with a soil that is anything but perfect. Intensive crop production with tillage, pesticides, nutrient removal, erosion and soil degradation have left them with a less than perfect soil. However, even seemingly perfect soils do not stay...
How Do I Know If I Have Dispersive Soils That Need Gypsum?
Soils containing dispersible clays can be problem soils. A dispersible clay is a clay that does not stay stable when wetted, but slakes or disperses easily. The major problem with dispersed clay is that it can block soil pores and reduce water permeability. The fine clay also acts as a...
Understanding the Calcium Cycle
Most minerals important to biological life follow a natural cycle that tracks how they enter the soil and their fate once there. Understanding these cycles is important because it helps you manage the mineral and influence the way it interacts with other factors on the farm. Let's take a look...
How Does Gypsum Remediate Saline And Sodic Soils?
How does gypsum help? One of the most popular and best-known uses of gypsum is in reclaiming saline and sodic soils and remediating irrigation waters high in sodium salts. In the southwestern U.S. (California and Arizona), Rio Grande valley and other parts of the world, soils and irrigation water can...
How Can I Tell If Gypsum Is Working?
I have been interested in gypsum for nearly a decade now and we have applied it on our family farm in Nebraska – following a 3 year cycle with 1 ton applications every third year. I had heard all the stories how it improves soil structure, particularly in tight clay...
Can Gypsum Remediate Dense, Deflocculated Soils?
One of gypsum’s primary benefits as a soil amendment is that the addition of calcium will flocculate the soil. Flocculation causes soil particles to come together and form natural aggregates and peds that improves soil structure and porosity. When soil particles disperse (deflocculated soils), natural aggregates breakdown and disperse, damaging...
Soil pH…Does Gypsum Help? Read below to find out.
Calcium sulfate (or gypsum) is a soluble inorganic compound. Gypsum has been used for many years to improve aggregation and inhibit or overcome dispersion in sodic soils. One of the many misnomers about calcium sulfate, or gypsum, is that it can effect soil pH. That misnomer arises from the fact that limestone, another calcium-containing...
Salting the Earth – Counteract Contamination with Calcium Sulfate
“Salting the earth” was a practice of ancient conquering armies. They poisoned farmland with salt so that crops would not grow. To the best of my knowledge, no one has intentionally “salted the earth” for many years. However, there is much unintentional soil contamination. Major sources of contamination include irrigation...
What is Selenite?
Selenite is a naturally occurring crystalline mineral also known as gypsum or calcium sulfate. Despite the similarity in the words, selenite contains no significant amount of selenium. In its purest form, selenite is nearly transparent and colorless; however most mined selenite is whitish to opaque to brownish in color. EcoGEM’s...