Soil pH in Murray, OK: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Murray, OK

Typical topsoil in Murray, OK is pH 6.92, already right for vegetable garden (6-7). Test before adding anything.

What Murray needs, by plant

• Already in range: lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, roses.
• Just outside, test first: tomatoes (off by 0.1).
• Beds or pots instead: potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons, blue hydrangeas, pink hydrangeas.

What to do next

If your test lands near 6.92, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 215,558 surveyed acres in Murray, OK, 40% are alkaline (above 7.3), 30% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 30% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5). Mapped soils run from pH 5.6 to 8.2, a spread of 2.6 units across 112 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 28.1% clay and 1.97% organic matter, which this site treats as clay. Moving it one pH unit takes about 11.5 lb of lime or 3.4 lb of sulfur per 100 sq ft. 32% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Murray against the rest of Oklahoma

pH 6.92 is 0.37 above the Oklahoma median of 6.55. 56 of 77 Oklahoma counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Comanche (6.79), Garfield (6.82), Alfalfa (6.89), Blaine (6.91), Major (7.06), Woodward (7.11), Marshall (7.17), Roger Mills (7.22).

The range in Oklahoma runs from Adair at 5.12 to Beaver at 7.65; Murray sits 71% of the way up.