Soil pH in Red Willow, NE: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Red Willow, NE

Typical topsoil in Red Willow, NE is pH 7.02, just outside the 6-7 range for vegetable garden. Test first; it may need nothing.

What Red Willow needs, by plant

• Just outside, test first: lawn (cool-season grass) (off by 0), vegetable garden (off by 0), tomatoes (off by 0.2), roses (off by 0).
• Beds or pots instead: potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons, blue hydrangeas, pink hydrangeas.

What to do next

If your test lands near 7.02, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 457,592 surveyed acres in Red Willow, NE, 61% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 32% are alkaline (above 7.3), 7% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5). Mapped soils run from pH 5.5 to 8.5, a spread of 3 units across 194 soil components. 61% 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 20.7% clay and 2.16% 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. 31% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Red Willow against the rest of Nebraska

pH 7.02 is 0.27 above the Nebraska median of 6.75. 77 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: Frontier (6.97), Knox (6.97), Merrick (6.97), Dixon (7), Cedar (7.03), Chase (7.08), Boyd (7.1), Deuel (7.12).

The range in Nebraska runs from Fillmore at 5.88 to Scotts Bluff at 7.58; Red Willow sits 67% of the way up.