Soil pH in Rooks, KS: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Rooks, KS

Typical topsoil in Rooks, KS is pH 7.05, just outside the 6-7 range for vegetable garden. Test first; it may need nothing.

What Rooks needs, by plant

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

What to do next

If your test lands near 7.05, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 570,886 surveyed acres in Rooks, KS, 42% are alkaline (above 7.3), 31% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5), 28% are near neutral (6.5-7.3). Mapped soils run from pH 5.5 to 8.2, a spread of 2.7 units across 218 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 23.1% clay and 2.05% 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.

Rooks against the rest of Kansas

pH 7.05 is 0.48 above the Kansas median of 6.57. 73 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: Smith (6.88), Gray (6.9), Decatur (6.91), Mitchell (6.99), Barber (7.06), Hodgeman (7.08), Graham (7.1), Meade (7.11).

The range in Kansas runs from Cherokee at 5.95 to Wallace at 7.51; Rooks sits 71% of the way up.