Why You Should Lime Your Lawn In Spring
Although it may not feel like it in many parts of our great (and cold) country, it is, technically, officially spring in Canada. We made it, folks! Lawn care season is just around the corner.
Early spring is an ideal time to lime your lawn, and is a great way to further improve your soil after performing a core aeration on your lawn. If your lawn is wilted or dormant, never apply lime; instead, wait for a time when the lawn is actively growing like early spring or fall.
Regular liming can do a wealth of good for your grass. With a number of benefits, calcitic lime is a welcome addition for every home lawn, especially those that need a little TLC.
With baseball starting and Easter coming fast, it’s hard to deny that spring is here. That means it’s time to start mentally preparing for the lawn care season, even if your grass won’t see any action for a few weeks yet.
Here’s why spring is the perfect time to lime your lawn
Balance Soil pH
When soil is acidic, it becomes extremely hard to grow healthy grass. As the soil acidity gets worse, plant essential nutrients become unavailable for the plant to uptake, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – the three macro nutrients required for healthy growth. Neutralizing soil pH effectively frees up these essential nutrients, giving your lawn a better chance to thrive.
Manage Moss
Unlike grass, moss thrives in acidic soil. Moss infestations are common in shady, moist areas well as many coastal regions with acidic soil pH, where grass finds it very difficult to compete.
Using calcitic lime will help neutralize your soil pH, giving turf a better chance at outcompeting moss, and reducing infestation.
That said, lime cannot kill moss. Although annual lime treatments are very beneficial and a good cultural practice, existing moss infestations may require moss control treatments.
Manage Weeds
Like moss, weeds can thrive in acidic soil. Getting the soil back to optimal conditions, you’re giving your grass a better chance to grow and outcompete weeds. Like a baseball player training during the off-season, it’s important to give your grass an advantage over its competitors.
Preserve and Protect Your Lawn
While the major benefit of using lime in your lawn is correcting soil acidity, calcitic lime also adds an important nutrient to your lawn; that’s right, calcium.
Calcium helps maintain your lawn’s colour and strength, and also helps protect the lawn from stress, including heat, drought, or heavy foot traffic.
Improve Fertilizer Performance
Liming can help improve the efficiency of your fertilizing efforts by nourishing the good bacteria found in soil. This in turn will make your fertilizer perform better, since the lime optimizes soil pH allowing plant essential nutrients to become available.
Correcting undesirable soil pH conditions prior to and during fertilizer applications is recommended practice.
Contributed by: Brent Szotak expert in lawn care and irrigation.