Time for lime

An episode of the The Dairy Edge podcast, hosted by Teagasc, titled "Time for lime" was published on October 20, 2025 and runs 29 minutes.

October 20, 2025 ·29m · The Dairy Edge

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Summary

John Maher, Grass10 Manager, and John Leahy, dairy farmer in Athea, Co. Limerick, join Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss applying lime. Despite difficult weather a few weeks ago, things have improved, John explains, and ground conditions, rotation length and money in the bank will allow people to spread lime. John outlines that we are very short of where we should be in terms of lime applied to where we should be. It’s more than 40 years since we spread over 2 million tonnes of lime which is what we should be applying. John Leahy tells of his experience of increasing the pH on his farm. He went after it hard at the start and got it up to where it should be now and he’s at the point where 20-40t keeps him on point each year. John also outlines how he went after the lime as he felt he could spend a lot of money on fertiliser with little return. He has gotten a phenomenal response to his lime applications. His soil fertility has taken nearly 10 years to get right but he got his lime right from the start.Opportunities will present themselves, people need to take them, he says. For a list of suppliers of lime go to: https://www.grolime.ie/ For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

Episode Description

John Maher, Grass10 Manager, and John Leahy, dairy farmer in Athea, Co. Limerick, join Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss applying lime.

Despite difficult weather a few weeks ago, things have improved, John explains, and ground conditions, rotation length and money in the bank will allow people to spread lime.

John outlines that we are very short of where we should be in terms of lime applied to where we should be. It’s more than 40 years since we spread over 2 million tonnes of lime which is what we should be applying.

John Leahy tells of his experience of increasing the pH on his farm. He went after it hard at the start and got it up to where it should be now and he’s at the point where 20-40t keeps him on point each year.

John also outlines how he went after the lime as he felt he could spend a lot of money on fertiliser with little return. He has gotten a phenomenal response to his lime applications.

His soil fertility has taken nearly 10 years to get right but he got his lime right from the start.

Opportunities will present themselves, people need to take them, he says.

For a list of suppliers of lime go to: https://www.grolime.ie/

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com