Soil pH preferences vary between regional lawn grasses , but most grasses prefer soil pH between 5. Warm-season grasses tolerate slightly lower pH, while cool-season grasses prefer pH slightly higher.
When pH strays too far in either direction, even plentiful nutrients are restricted. Lime restores balance in overly acidic soil to bring pH back to optimal growing levels. Poor grass growth and lawn moss are signs that lawns may need lime. Lawns in regions with heavy rainfall tend to need lime regularly. Your lawn's soil type affects how much lime it takes to change soil pH. If your soil pH is out of ideal range, apply lime products to increase its pH and sulfur products to decrease it, if too alkaline.
Apply these products at rates recommended by your soil report. Lawn grasses might perform poorly in dense clay or heavily sandy soils. When applied to clay soils, lime takes an excessive amount of time to penetrate and adjust pH. Sandy soils drain very quickly. Lime can leach from these easily in heavy rain. Organic soil amendments can mitigate these problems. Incorporating organic matter like finished compost, aged manure and chopped pine bark can significantly improve the health of your landscape soil and help lime work more efficiently.
For most lawns you will need between 15 and 30 lbs. Put half of the lime you will need for your lawn into a broadcast spreader. Calibrate the spreader to accommodate the size of the lime pellets and set the application rate to half the application rate needed. Go over your lawn once with your spreader to broadcast half of the lime at half the rate.
Then fill the spreader again at a 90 degree angle to the direction you first went in and broadcast the second half of the lime. Go over the freshly planted area with a lawn roller to ensure that the seed has good soil contact. The best time to apply lime pellets with grass seed is during cool weather--early spring for warm-season grasses and early fall for cool-season grasses. Purchase dolomite lime pellets whenever possible.
A substance with a pH value lower than 7 is considered an acid, and a substance with a pH value higher than 7 is considered an alkaline or base. Keep in mind that a lower pH level means a higher concentration of hydrogen, and as the scale is logarithmic, each unit increase means a tenfold change in acidity.
For example, soil with a pH value of 6 has ten times the hydrogen concentration of soil with a pH value of 7. Most soil ranges in pH value from 5. For healthy plant growth, a pH value between 6. Fortunately, you can test the acidity level of your soil in a variety of ways. You can purchase an expensive, yet accurate commercial pH testing probe, a more affordable disposable pH testing kit or use any of a variety of DIY home-testing methods.
Depending on your goals and budget, the dollar amount spent on soil testing can vary greatly. Learn more about the different soil types. Soil acidity naturally increases over time thanks to an increasing concentration of hydrogen in the soil. Agriculture speeds up the process of acidification, largely through the use of ammonium-based fertilizers.
Ammonium nitrogen from the fertilizer is converted into nitrate and hydrogen ions in the soil. If the nitrates are not properly absorbed by the plants, the nitrates leach away from the root zone, leaving behind hydrogen ions, which increase the acidity of the soil.
At a large scale, soil acidity is also caused by the sheer act of harvesting plants. Plants themselves are slightly alkaline, with a higher pH value. In a natural setting, when plants die, they decompose into the slightly acidic soil and restore a healthy pH balance.
When plants are harvested, the cycle is broken, and the balancing act is never performed, leaving the soil slightly acidic. Lime is introduced both to supply calcium and to help restore the pH balance of soil. Liming is by far and away the most cost-effective solution for neutralizing soil , so it is used widely by farmers and gardeners everywhere. Lime is made from ground limestone, a gray sedimentary rock composed primarily of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, which are formed from the buildup of ancient organic remains.
These components make lime rich in calcium and magnesium. These compounds are what neutralize the acidity of the soil. As lime dissolves in soil, calcium rises to the surface of soil particles, replacing the acidic component of the soil.
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