Soil pH in Gove, KS: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Gove, KS

Typical topsoil in Gove, KS is pH 7.36 and calcareous, so sulfur won't lower it for long. For vegetable garden, choose alkaline-tolerant varieties and add compost rather than fighting the soil.

What Gove needs, by plant

• Beds or pots instead: lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, roses, blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons, blue hydrangeas, pink hydrangeas.

What to do next

If your test confirms pH near 7.36, consider raised beds for anything acid-loving; with 62% of soils here carrying free lime, sulfur will not hold.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 684,174 surveyed acres in Gove, KS, 65% are alkaline (above 7.3), 23% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 12% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5). Mapped soils run from pH 5.5 to 8.2, a spread of 2.7 units across 169 soil components. 65% 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 22.9% clay and 1.92% 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. 62% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Gove against the rest of Kansas

pH 7.36 is 0.79 above the Kansas median of 6.57. 98 of 105 Kansas counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Kearny (7.32), Stanton (7.32), Wichita (7.34), Clark (7.36), Cheyenne (7.38), Grant (7.39), Logan (7.45), Hamilton (7.48).

The range in Kansas runs from Cherokee at 5.95 to Wallace at 7.51; Gove sits 90% of the way up.