26 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



Five Sisters in Cuba. All Americans. 



Ihe Use of Lime in Cuba. 

 i5\- Dr. Paul Karutz. 



Ceballus, Cuba, Aug., '09. 



Tlu- general soil-condition in Culja 

 calls for lime, either for neutralizing 

 the soil's acidity or for setting tree plant- 

 food that nature intendea to rc;;.erve. On 

 the hcav}- red soil the addition of lime 

 will be benelicial also for the soils, pre- 

 venting baking and cracking drring dry 

 weather. 



Since the iime has the powei' to make 

 available the stored plant-food /t seems to 

 be the cheapest kind of fertilizer, but 

 here we have to be very careful. Re- 

 peated applications of lime will draw on 

 the plant-food reserve all right, but it 

 cannot add anything except bettering the 

 physical condition of the soil. Therefore 

 lime can never replace proper fertilizers. 

 The replacing of the drawn plant-food 

 by organic or artificial fertilization has 

 to follow under all circumstances. 



At the present time where the fruit 

 growing in Cuba is more or less in its 

 infancy and where poor bearing of trees 

 can l)e traced to sour soil and unavailable 

 plant-food, we have to start with lime. 



There are three kinds of lime we can 

 use: carbonate of lime, represented by 

 the coral formation which underlies the 

 Cuban soil: burned lime, which is cal- 



cium oxide, the corals less the carbonic 

 acid which has been driven out by burn- 

 ing; and calcium hydroxide, which has 

 l)een formed out of the o.xide by absorb- 

 ing water out of the air, and is called 

 air-slacked lime. When this air-slacked 

 lime has been exposed to the air for a 

 longer time it absorbs again carbonic 

 acid, changing into carbonate of lime; 

 resembling chemically the corals, but. of 

 course, in powder form. This absorb- 

 ing of carbonic acid also takes place in 

 the soil when burned or air-slaked lime 

 has been applied. 



It makes very little differenc; whether 

 the soil receives the calcium in any of 

 the three combinations, the value lays 

 more in the grade of fineness than in 

 the chemical combination. When we 

 powder the coral fine enough we can use 

 it directly on the soil. As to the ques- 

 tion which is cheaper, burning or pul- 

 verizing, I would say burned iime acts 

 quicker and more intensively upon the 

 soil, the other two limes act slower. 

 And for fruit growing as well as for 

 sugar cane a slower action is more econ- 

 omical. 



As the molecular weights of the three 

 lime combinations are different, by using 

 different preparations, we have to apply 

 different weights for securing equal re- 

 sults. One hundred parts of coral (car- 

 bonate of lime) are equivalent to 56 



