Why Is Lime Important For Commercial Lawns?
Liming is one of the most inexpensive ways to improve soil conditions and can be applied any time of the year. Lime restores the balance of overly acidic soil to bring pH levels back for optimal growing. Soils in Virginia are naturally very acidic containing pH’s levels of 4.5 to 6.3.
Liming the soil helps certain nutrients become more available to plants. Nutrients applied to your lawn throughout the year are not as available to your grass when soil pH is below 6.3. Proper soil pH will encourage soil microbes to convert nitrogen to a plant-usable form and contributes to the overall health, vigor, and resiliency of your lawn. Overall, lawns will get more from their fertilization treatments if their pH is in the correct range.
Liming is not included in the 7 applications provided annually.
How do I know what my soil pH is? Soil Testing.
Virginia Green’s soil test will not only identify the soil’s pH and nutrient levels, but it will also provide a recommendation for how much lime (or not) should be applied to benefit the lawn. The lime requirement is not only related to the pH of the soil, but also to its buffer capacity or cation exchange capacity (CEC). Total amounts of clay and organic matter in soil, as well as the kind of clay, will determine how strongly soils are buffered. Buffering capacity increases with the amounts of clay and organic matter. Such soils require more lime to increase pH than soils with a lower buffer capacity.
Want Virginia Green to apply a lime application to your lawn or get an analysis of your soil, contact us today and we will be happy to assist!
We’d love to share our expertise with you (and your business!)
