For the past four years, Helena Chemical Agronomist Ben Moerhle and a Washington State University researcher have been study the issue of aluminum toxicity due to a lower soil PH in the Palouse region.??Problems with soil pH are often attributed to other causes like drought, spotty patches or disease but those can just be the symptoms as Moerhle explains??Moerhle: "A lot of the times the ultimate cause — way down at the bottom level — is pH. That is allowing more disease to come in. It allowing lesser water holding capacity of the soil. It's allowing all these issues to interact with the crop and we are placing blame all these issues when we have an ultimate bottom problem that we can deal with."??He shares more about a new product, NuCal Liquid Calcium Carbonate.??Moerhle: "This last year we kind of stumbled upon a liquid calcium carbonate product that is extremely fine that actually changes the soil pH and decreases the aluminum levels in the soil. So with one product we are able to change and deal with both problems and deal with both issues. With calcium carbonate, it all comes down to the size of the particle.So the smaller the particle the more surface area we can affect of the soil and the better reactivity we are going to have — almost instantly. The product we are dealing with is the finest on the market (that I'm aware of) it is around 1 or 2 micron in size — which is extremely fine. So we are seeing a difference in soil pH in a matter of a couple of days."
