by Xtreme Turf Lawn Care Serving Homeowners in Daphne, Fairhope, Spanish Fort, & Mobile, AL
Did you know that southern Alabama lawns tend to be more acidic, and acidic soils don’t provide a healthy host for lawn grass?
If you want a lawn that’s green, thick and nearly weed-free, you need a fall application of lime. Lime helps restore the proper pH for your soil as well as adds vital nutrients back into it.
In this blog post, you’ll learn more about pH and why it’s important to your lawn’s vitality, as well as how lime balances your soil’s pH.
Your Soil’s pH
If you remember back to high school science class, you learned about pH. Its scale ranges from 0-14, with 0-6.5 as acidic, 7 is neutral, and 7.5-14 is alkaline.
Your soil’s pH needs to be balanced to house your yard grass. Your lawn’s ideal pH is 6.5.
However, in Southern Alabama, where the soils are a mix of sandy and clay, the typical soil pH is more acidic. Lime helps raise levels to reach the correct pH.
How does your lawn care professional know if your soil is too acidic to grow grass?
He finds out through a soil test. Your lawn care technician takes various samples of soil from your property to test them for their pH level.
The test results show the pH of your soil as well as what nutrients are missing. Then, your lawn care professional will apply lime not only to balance the soil, but also to feed the micro-organisms at work in your soil.
What is Lime?
Lime is crushed limestone. It’s made up of calcium oxide—a vital nutrient to add to Southern Alabama soils that lose calcium, magnesium and other vital minerals due to the porous sandy-clay soil.
Here are eight benefits your lawn receives from lime applications:
- It provides available calcium to raise or maintain pH levels.
- It helps your lawn germinate faster.
- It stimulates root growth, so your turfgrass roots grow deep into the soil to access moisture stores and nutrients.
- It improves microbial activity in the soil—keeping the soil a healthy space to house your lawn grass.
- It helps fertilizers work better to take nutrients to the plants above ground.
- It improves soil structure.
- It improves calcium levels in plant cells to help your turfgrass become more resistant to disease.
- It helps your lawn need less fertilizer to produce beautiful results.
How Your Local Lawn Care Company Helps You with Lime Applications
Typically, your lawn service technician will take soil samples from your property. However, when you hire a local lawn care professional, who has vast experience working in Baldwin and Mobile Counties, you may not need a soil test.
At Xtreme Turf Lawn Care, we’ve been serving Southern Alabama for the past five years, and we know that the area’s sandy-clay soil needs lime to produce healthy lawns.
Our technicians will apply commercial brand lime that balances your soil to 6.5, so you have a beautiful green lawn with hardly any weeds.
If you live in the Baldwin or Mobile County region, call us today for your lime application at 251-648-9947 or fill out our contact page.
Sources:
Burke, Kelly, “Do You Need to Lime the Lawn?” TheSpruce.com: July 12, 2017.
Carroll, Jackie, “Adding Lime to Soil: What Does Lime Do for Soil and How Much Lime Does Soil Need?” GardeningKnowHow.com.
UniversityofMassachusetts.edu, “Soil pH and Liming,” Revised May 2011.
