Soil pH in Frontier, NE: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Frontier, NE

Typical topsoil in Frontier, NE is pH 6.97, already right for vegetable garden (6-7). Test before adding anything.

What Frontier needs, by plant

• Already in range: lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, roses.
• Just outside, test first: tomatoes (off by 0.2).
• Beds or pots instead: potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons, blue hydrangeas, pink hydrangeas.

What to do next

If your test lands near 6.97, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 623,146 surveyed acres in Frontier, NE, 40% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 33% are alkaline (above 7.3), 27% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5). Mapped soils run from pH 5.5 to 8.2, a spread of 2.7 units across 173 soil components. No single class covers 60% of the county, so two gardens a few miles apart here can need opposite treatments. Test your own bed.

Clay, organic matter and rates

Topsoil here averages 21.9% clay and 2.09% 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. 33% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Frontier against the rest of Nebraska

pH 6.97 is 0.22 above the Nebraska median of 6.75. 73 of 93 Nebraska counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Colfax (6.93), Keith (6.93), Stanton (6.93), Thurston (6.93), Knox (6.97), Merrick (6.97), Dixon (7), Red Willow (7.02).

The range in Nebraska runs from Fillmore at 5.88 to Scotts Bluff at 7.58; Frontier sits 64% of the way up.