Soil pH in Seward, KS: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Seward, KS

Typical topsoil in Seward, KS is pH 7.23, just outside the 6-7 range for vegetable garden. Test first; it may need nothing.

What Seward 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 7.23, you can skip lime and sulfur for lawn (cool-season grass), vegetable garden, roses.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 371,825 surveyed acres in Seward, KS, 69% are near neutral (6.5-7.3), 29% are alkaline (above 7.3), 3% are moderately acidic (5.5-6.5). Mapped soils run from pH 6.3 to 9.6, a spread of 3.3 units across 104 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 15.5% clay and 1.23% 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. 44% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Seward against the rest of Kansas

pH 7.23 is 0.66 above the Kansas median of 6.57. 86 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: Comanche (7.19), Haskell (7.19), Trego (7.19), Russell (7.2), Sheridan (7.23), Ellis (7.25), Scott (7.28), Sherman (7.28).

The range in Kansas runs from Cherokee at 5.95 to Wallace at 7.51; Seward sits 82% of the way up.