Soil pH in Lake of the Woods, MN: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Lake of the Woods, MN

Typical topsoil in Lake of the Woods, MN is pH 6.68, already right for vegetable garden (6-7). Test before adding anything.

What Lake of the Woods 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).
• Beds or pots instead: potatoes, blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons, blue hydrangeas.

What to do next

If your test lands near 6.68, 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 487,306 surveyed acres in Lake of the Woods, MN, 48% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 31% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5), 21% are alkaline (above 7.3). Mapped soils run from pH 5 to 8, a spread of 3 units across 143 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 14% clay and 3.79% 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. 42% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Lake of the Woods against the rest of Minnesota

pH 6.68 is right at the Minnesota median of 6.64. 46 of 87 Minnesota counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Blue Earth (6.64), Freeborn (6.64), Becker (6.65), Rock (6.67), Stearns (6.69), Scott (6.7), Cottonwood (6.72), Jackson (6.72).

The range in Minnesota runs from Cook at 5.21 to Swift at 7.49; Lake of the Woods sits 64% of the way up.