Soil pH in Morrill, NE: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Morrill, NE

Typical topsoil in Morrill, NE is pH 7.17, just outside the 6-7 range for vegetable garden. Test first; it may need nothing.

What Morrill needs, by plant

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

What to do next

If your test lands near 7.17, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 905,459 surveyed acres in Morrill, NE, 70% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 30% are alkaline (above 7.3). Mapped soils run from pH 6 to 9.2, a spread of 3.2 units across 305 soil components. 70% 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 8.4% clay and 1.49% organic matter, which this site treats as sandy. Moving it one pH unit takes about 3 lb of lime or 1.2 lb of sulfur per 100 sq ft. 31% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Morrill against the rest of Nebraska

pH 7.17 is 0.42 above the Nebraska median of 6.75. 83 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: Boyd (7.1), Deuel (7.12), Cheyenne (7.15), Box Butte (7.17), Hayes (7.18), Dakota (7.24), Sioux (7.27), Hitchcock (7.3).

The range in Nebraska runs from Fillmore at 5.88 to Scotts Bluff at 7.58; Morrill sits 76% of the way up.