Without proper care, your lawn won’t be able to thrive. It doesn’t take long for a yard to become patchy, discolored, full of weeds, or overgrown. However, pay attention to these signs, because these ugly lawn symptoms can tell you what needs to be fixed. For example, if you notice yellowing and patchiness, it’s often an indication that your lawn’s pH isn’t balanced correctly.
There are a few ways to fix your lawn, including ween ‘n’ feed, fertilizer, aeration, and reseeding. However, there’s a simple way to help your yard thrive that you should consider before or alongside all of those. Many lawn problems are related to pH balance, and one of the most common ways to address pH is spreading a bit of lime across your yard. If you use the right amount, lime will restore a good pH balance, restore depleted nutrients, and help to correct some previous damage.
When appropriately used, liming your lawn will help give it everything it needs to thrive. Before you know it, you’ll have an eye-catching and beautiful lawn that all of your neighbors will envy.
Is Lime Good for my Lawn?
The short answer is yes, assuming your soil pH is in the acidic range. Applying a lime treatment to your lawn can help maintain a healthy lawn pH level or correct it if it has gotten too low.
Calcium carbonate in lime combats acidity, perfect for soil with a low pH level that has caused it to sour. Since grass prefers a more alkaline environment, raising the pH may be all it needs to thrive.
The most common way to see lime sold is as agricultural ground limestone. Many people don’t think of lime as a fertilizer and would instead call it a natural soil amendment. Balancing a lawn’s pH level isn’t the only benefit of a lime lawn treatment — it also nourishes your yard because calcium carbonate and magnesium are two essential lawn nutrients. Sufficient calcium in the soil can also help regulate the levels of a few other nutrients, thus reducing soil toxicity.
Still, it’s important to remember that you can overdo it when applying lime to your lawn can be harmful, no matter how many benefits there are to lime treatments.
What does Lime do for my Grass?
Other than balancing your lawn’s pH levels, lime can help with other issues, provided you know how to apply lime to your yard correctly. For example, agricultural lime can eliminate some toxic elements from the soil by binding them and adding vital nutrients like calcium carbonate, magnesium, zinc, copper, and phosphorus in manageable amounts. These nutrients help your grass thrive and give it that luscious, vivid green color.
While cleansing a lawn of harmful bacteria and toxins can be useful, there are also many good bacteria in soil that help it stay healthy and combat potentially harmful elements. Lime treatments can nourish these bacteria and are especially effective when combined with added compost.
Overall, lime treatments are one of the most beneficial ways to restore and maintain your lawn, but you have to apply the right amounts at the right time. Lawn care professionals should use lime treatments sparingly, or they could end up doing more harm than good.
When Should I Apply Lime to my Lawn?
You should apply lime sparingly, with three years between treatments unless soil pH tests indicate otherwise. It’s important to know when to use lime on your lawn to yield the best results.
First, understand that lime soaks into your soil at a rate of approximately one inch per year, and often has to be at least two inches deep to be effective. You could apply lime to your lawn at any point in the year, and it wouldn’t be completely ineffective. Remember that wilted or dormant grass and frosted-over lawns won’t take in the lime very well, so too early in the spring or too late in the fall isn’t the best time to lime your lawn.
Applying lime to a lawn in summer is very common, as that’s the optimal time to apply quite a few types of fertilizer. But remember, lime treatments aren’t fertilizer, and while applying lime to your lawn in the middle of summer isn’t bad, it’s not optimal. Rain and cooling temperatures help lime soak into your yard more efficiently and effectively, so early to mid-fall would be ideal.
If you’re unsure whether or not you should apply a lime treatment to your grass, you’ll have to have to do some testing. Thick, green, well-maintained lawns probably won’t benefit much from a lime treatment. If your lawn isn’t that luxurious, start by taking a pH test of your soil. If levels are low, a lime treatment can help.
For help diagnosing and caring for your lawn, call the professionals at Victory Lawn for a free estimate. We look forward to helping your lawn grow its best!