Soil pH in Stonewall, TX: Lime or Sulfur?

Typical topsoil pH in Stonewall, TX

Typical topsoil in Stonewall, TX is pH 7.52 and calcareous, so sulfur won't lower it for long. For vegetable garden, choose alkaline-tolerant varieties and add compost rather than fighting the soil.

What Stonewall needs, by plant

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

What to do next

If your test confirms pH near 7.52, consider raised beds for anything acid-loving; with 53% of soils here carrying free lime, sulfur will not hold.

How mixed the soil is

Of the 521,245 surveyed acres in Stonewall, TX, 55% are alkaline (above 7.3), 45% are near neutral (6.5-7.3). Mapped soils run from pH 6.5 to 8.3, a spread of 1.8 units across 80 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 22.8% clay and 1.1% 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. 53% of mapped components carry free carbonate (lime already in the ground), enough that sulfur gets neutralised before it does much.

Stonewall against the rest of Texas

pH 7.52 is 0.09 above the Texas median of 7.43. 143 of 254 Texas counties have more acidic topsoil. Nationally it is more alkaline than the US county median of 6.05.

Closest in pH within the state: Cottle (7.51), Haskell (7.51), Somervell (7.51), Callahan (7.52), Childress (7.53), Real (7.53), Zapata (7.53), Deaf Smith (7.54).

The range in Texas runs from Hardin at 4.64 to Upton at 8.19; Stonewall sits 81% of the way up.