Spreading powdered lime?

[freedomlives]

What kind of spreaders will actually spread it? Is it only those pre-1950 drop spreaders (6-12 foot wide wagons pulled originally behind tractors like this one: Kastendungerstreuer zu verkaufen! in Bayern - Offenberg | eBay Kleinanzeigen )? Because here in Slovakia, where I can find a lot of old, used equipment in the online ads, I really can't find a single one of these, even though I know, from finding for sale a users manual, that they were made even in the 1960's here, so I get the feeling that they all got sold for scrap, the wheels used to make some other type of wagon, or something like that.

Will any rotary spreaders spread powdered lime? There are plenty of used and new on the market here. Also, there is one drop spreader made for pulling behind a lawnmower with 105cm width, but a similar looking drop spreader on US Amazon had mixed reviews concerning powdered ag lime. Posypaci vozik SW 15 - GUDE Slovakia s.r.o. (pictures of inside mechanism, different than the old lime spreader in the first link).

I have to use powdered lime, because I sent off to Kinsey Agricultural Services in the US my soil samples to get an Albrecht system recommendation, which means that not just lime, but also other minerals needed as well as trace minerals, so for instance, if the recommendation comes back that the soil needs boron, say 10 lbs borax / acre, then the only way that I see applying that is to thoroughly mix it with the lime in the right proportions, and likewise whatever else would be recommended.

I have about 8 acres to do. (another reason for powdered lime-- if they sell pelletized lime at all, it will be in small quantities for Europe-sized back yards, whereas the powdered stuff from the quarry in bulk is, iirc 30€/ton + delivery.)

Basically, I'd prefer to buy some machine in the Slovak or Czech market, because it simplifies delivery and ordering arrangements. On the other hand, I'm considering finding how much shipping from Germany would be, because I think this antique equipment may be better suited to bulk lime.

Other important piece of info-- I just have the Italian walk behind with powered trailer and Czech pitiful walk behind. So I am pretty much limited to a ground powered spreader and pull it behind the powered trailer. Also, it is important to be able to precisely apply the lime according to their recommendations, so if they say 500lbs/acre, I want to be sure I get pretty close to 500 lbs.

 

[farmerboybill]

I used to work for a company that spread a lot of fertilizer through a spinner spreader.

We had a customer who wanted us to apply powdered lime for him. It was a royal pain and very hard to be accurate. Any sort of wind during the day completely ruined the spread pattern.

Is there a local business that offers lime application? It might be a lot cheaper to hire them to do it versus trying to buy an applicator. Lime isn't something you do more than once every few years.

 

[Gary Fowler]

We always had the co-op who we bought the lime from spread it for us. Only a few dollars per acre at max and sometimes it was free depending on the amount of lime we bought. The ag lime we got looked a lot like grey sand and not powder. At 500 or more pounds per acre, it wasn't economical to buy it by the bag and spread it ourselves. I do my acre of lawn with a pull behind rotary spreader that holds about 150 pounds at a time of pelletized lime and it spread well. I don't know how well it would spread powdered lime though. It seems powdered lime would be hazardous in the wind as it is pretty caustic to the skin and eyes.

 

[freedomlives]

I finally got the results of the soil test. So I need to spread not only 2.5 tons of dolomite per hectare, but also 224kg of potassium sulfate, 118 kg of sulfur, 22kg of borax, 500 grams of sodium molybdate and 800 grams of cobalt sulfate.
The only way I see being able to spread particularly the last two is by evenly mixing them with the minimum quantity of lime that I can accurately spread across the ground.
I just found though that a german user of this forum has a youtube video of his homemade spreader, so maybe I should just make my own as well:
Einachser Eigenbau Dungerstreuer, Kastenstreuer, Kalkstreuer - YouTube

 

[DJ54]

Are there any local businesses that offer custom lime spreading..?? 20 tons of lime through a small spreader like shown in the video would take forever. Might be worth checking into. Ag. lime from a quarry ranges from small chips, to mostly fine dust,and is usually damp from setting in the pile for a good while. And doesn't go through one of those spreaders well. It has a tendency to bridge over in the hopper also.

As far as the fertilizer/mineral, that could be bought in bulk, and custom blended, if you have a local farm supply that sells bulk fertilizer. Then applied with a small broadcast spreader. It is much less expensive buying through a bulk supplier than in bags.

I needed approx. 700 lbs. of potash, and 160 lbs. of phosphorus on my hay field this Spring. Potash by the 50 lb. bag at a local feed mill was $24.99 each, they don' handle bulk fertilizer. So it would have been $300.00 just for the potash. I didn't even bother to ask about the phosphorus. I called another mill that does handle bulk fertilizer. I shoveled the fertilizer into used feed bags, and got it all for $69+change. For that kind of money, I can shovel a LOT..!!

 

[freedomlives]

I mixed units a bit in my posts. 2.5 tons / hectare is about 1 ton per acre. I've decided just to drive to Austria and get an old ground powered drop spreader-- 9 feet wide. I have to drive across Slovakia with our van to deliver books my wife's non-profit had printed, so I'll be next to Austria anyway, and it would be a shame to drive back with an empty van!
Other than the lime, I've sourced the sulfur and soft rock phosphate, but finding a fertilizer grade of potassium sulfate (since I don't want to pay 32€ / 25kg bag of pure, technical grade K2SO4).

 

[freedomlives]

I got an old drop spreader from Austria, along with 1.2 tons of soft-rock-phosphate from west Slovakia. The hills and rural landscape just south of St. Pölten is incredibly beautiful and it made a good father-son trip with my oldest son. After spending two hours with the farmer selling it seeing his sheep, loom, greenhouse and speaking a lot of broken German, when it came time to pay he even dropped the price from 150€ to 100€.
Austria 216 trip - Google Photos (I need to take a photo of the spreader, these are just of the farm we visited.)
There are three greased bearings that I need to clean, and then it will be ready to spread.

 

[freedomlives]

 

[Midniteoyl]

Slovakia is a beautiful country.. But, you drove ~6hrs for a drop spreader? :shocked:

 

[freedomlives]

I could not find a single one in Slovakia, nor even Czech Republic. I found an image of an instruction manual for one from 1960 in Czech, so I even knew the correct word (which is the same as is used for a modern, rotary spreader).
But the drive was also for the fertilizer in west Slovakia. If I need more of it (a soft rock phosphate product) in the future, I'll be ordering at a more "normal" time and the company would be willing to add it to a larger shipment going to a farm out my way.

I get the impression that in the pre-socialist Czechoslovakia, people either weren't liming their fields, or else they were just throwing the lime with shovels from a wagon if they did. Then, I suppose the post WWII destruction of small farms meant that there weren't many drop spreaders sold. The farms weren't all immediately collectivised, but the farmers were given quotas of so many liters of milk, so many eggs, so many kilos of pork to be delivered to the state which were made to be nearly impossible to meet. I have a quota card from my wife's grandfather, showing how much he still owed. So certainly the farmers didn't have money at that time to be buying new equipment suitable for small farms, and by the late 60s, early 70s it was all collectivised, and they had trucks with the lime spreading equipment, or big trailers to pull behind large tractors-- I came across one or two of these for sale, but I don't have 100s of hectares to lime!

The spreader works great for the powdered lime. It is OK for granulated stuff as well.

 

[Ford850]

It looks like a classic spreader. I would enjoy more pictures of it if you have them.

 

[freedomlives]

Here is a gallery of some more.
Drop spreader - Google Photos

The red machine is the Czech Vari two wheel tractor. Because converting the green Goldoni to be a rotary plow from being a powered trailer takes so long, and I had to use it to plant the potatoes, I struggled around the field pulling the spreader with the Vari, just standing on the board on the spreader. Otherwise, I hitch it to the back of the Goldoni trailer-- I added a tow-ball there. The tow ball is also great with hauling hay-- I can attach my cars trailer and haul twice so much.

 

[MHarryE]

Found this thread when I searched lime spreading. How many hectare did you cover? I have about 8 hectare to cover. I live about 200 km from the nearest lime supplier. I have been trying to figure out how to spread the lime and saw your post. I remember seeing a drop spreader on one of our farms that I might be able to make work. It will look funny behind the tractor I would use - 170 HP MFWD - but it might do the job.

 

[skipperbrown]

Spreading powered lime is a chore without the proper equipment. We did 20 ac a few years ago from a wagon pulled very slowly through the field and a couple of high school football players shoveling it out one scoop at a time. We never saw the football players again. They may still be in rehab. 3 pt hitch fertilizer spreaders will usually clog in about 15 seconds. Ask me how I know that.

 

[freedomlives]

I spread 2 hectares of a pelletized fertilizer that contained both lime and some trace minerals I needed. I only got about 1/3 hectare of the powdered lime done, because I was mixing in sulfur and some other trace minerals, and by hand with a shovel, then rolling a barrel to mix, then injuring my back to pour into the spreader. The spreader I have has steel wheels, so speed is definitely limited. I wish I could tell you how much, but I just can't remember.

I would say its doable, especially if one of the tractors you have listed has a front end loader to get the lime in to the spreader.

I didn't get it finished, because we went in September to the US, and despite covering the lime with a plastic sheet on top, it wasn't covered on the bottom and by spring had soaked up water from the ground, making it not a powder. Now that I have a 4 wheel tractor with FEL, I'm up for buying more lime and trying again.

One other thing, depending on your field (I'm assuming a pasture?), you could potentially pull the spreader with a 4 wheeler or pickup truck instead of the tractor, to save fuel and lessen compaction. I was pulling the 2 meter wide spreader I have with a Goldoni two wheel tractor with PTO trailer, it has a total of 12 HP.