Soil pH in Brown, WI: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Brown, WI

Typical topsoil in Brown, WI is pH 6.74, already right for vegetable garden (6-7). Test before adding anything.

What Brown needs, by plant

• Already in range: lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, roses.
• Just outside, test first: strawberries (off by 0.2), pink hydrangeas (off by 0.2).
• Sulfur: potatoes 2.8 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications; blueberries 3.9 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications; azaleas and rhododendrons 3.5 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications; blue hydrangeas 3.5 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications.

What to do next

If your test lands near 6.74, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, strawberries, roses, pink hydrangeas.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 268,297 surveyed acres in Brown, WI, 92% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 6% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5), 2% are alkaline (above 7.3). Mapped soils run from pH 5.5 to 7.9, a spread of 2.4 units across 196 soil components. 92% of the land falls in one class, so the county figure is a fair first guess for most yards here.

Clay, organic matter and rates

Topsoil here averages 19.2% clay and 2.94% organic matter, which this site treats as loam. Moving it one pH unit takes about 7 lb of lime or 2.3 lb of sulfur per 100 sq ft. 1% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground).

Brown against the rest of Wisconsin

pH 6.74 is 0.66 above the Wisconsin median of 6.08. 59 of 72 Wisconsin counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Walworth (6.63), Green Lake (6.69), Milwaukee (6.69), Outagamie (6.69), Fond du Lac (6.76), Kewaunee (6.76), Manitowoc (6.79), Waukesha (6.79).

The range in Wisconsin runs from Iron at 5.16 to Washington at 6.88; Brown sits 92% of the way up.