# Is This the Worst Soil Analysis Ever?



## harold56 (Nov 13, 2017)

I recently submitted and sample of the soil in my lawn to Soil Savvy. As the analysis shows my soil is high in calcium by an order of magnitude. This was not a surprise because the soil is basically white caliche (a.k.a. Limestone, a.k.a Calcium Carbonate). The question I have is if there is anything I can reasonably do to improve the calcium situation? Any advice or comparisons would be greatly appreciated. The lawn was first soded last year with common bermuda. I do have a small section where I am experimenting with Seashore Paspalum and Zeon Zoysia to compare their performance to the bermuda.


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## Sublime (Jun 15, 2019)

1-2 pounds of citric acid per 1k, apply with lots of water. Will help get your pH down. Not sure what else to recommend but that ought to be a start.


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## LawnRat (Mar 22, 2019)

Forget the calcium, give that poor grass some fert!


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## ken-n-nancy (Jul 25, 2017)

Looking at your soil test, although the big bar for Ca looks like a big problem, it isn't one of your main issues. The bigger issues are the low bars for phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). You're going to be wanting to apply fertilizers with P and K. Applying a balanced fertilizer (as suggested in the N-P-K recommendation) is the solution.

I'm not an expert on lowering pH by any means, as I'm in New Hampshire where we have acidic soils (low pH) instead of alkaline soils (high pH) like in Texas. However, from what I've read and heard from many lawn owners on these forums, your pH of 7.65 isn't too high for growing grass. You can grow great grass at that pH. The biggest issue with a higher pH in terms of growing grass is iron availability. However, rather than try to lower the pH in your limestone-laden lawn (which would be like trying to empty Lewisville Lake with a teacup), you can address the lack of iron availability by using fertilizers with chelated iron or biosolids such as Milorganite.

My suggestion would be to not mess with citric acid, elemental sulfur, or any other attempts to lower your pH (particularly as I think you will find the attempts to be unsuccessful at anything other than depleting your wallet) but instead occasionally use a fertilizer which has iron-containing biosolids or provides chelated iron.

In any case, the more important thing is to get going with those balanced fertilizer applications to boost your phosphorus and potassium.


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## Jconnelly6b (Mar 4, 2018)

Look for fertilizer with Ammonium Sulfate as the Nitrogen source. Over time that will do its part to bring pH down as well.


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## harold56 (Nov 13, 2017)

Thanks for the comments guys. I did get down the first app of balanced fert this weekend and an app of Iron. Now is the part where I become impatient and wait for the results to begin showing up. Interesting comments about the citric acid. I was wondering what to do about the PH. I'll continue to give that some more thoughts. Thanks again everybody.


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