Soil pH in Rice, KS: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Rice, KS

Typical topsoil in Rice, KS is pH 6.14, already right for vegetable garden (6-7). Test before adding anything.

What Rice needs, by plant

• Already in range: lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, strawberries, roses, pink hydrangeas.
• Just outside, test first: tomatoes (off by 0.1), potatoes (off by 0.1), azaleas and rhododendrons (off by 0.1).
• Sulfur: blueberries 2.5 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications; blue hydrangeas 2.1 lb/100 sq ft over 2 applications.

What to do next

If your test lands near 6.14, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, roses, azaleas and rhododendrons, pink hydrangeas.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 463,513 surveyed acres in Rice, KS, 69% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5), 18% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 8% are alkaline (above 7.3), 6% are strongly acidic (below 5.5). Mapped soils run from pH 4.7 to 8.7, a spread of 4 units across 341 soil components. 69% 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 18.9% clay and 2.14% 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. 5% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground).

Rice against the rest of Kansas

pH 6.14 is 0.43 below the Kansas median of 6.57. 8 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: Crawford (6.12), Montgomery (6.12), Woodson (6.13), Republic (6.14), Jackson (6.15), Franklin (6.17), Marshall (6.17), Atchison (6.18).

The range in Kansas runs from Cherokee at 5.95 to Wallace at 7.51; Rice sits 12% of the way up.