Benefits of Garden Lime for Healthy Plants
Table of Contents
Author/Reviewed By: Josh Miller, Sales Manager: Baker Lime & North America Minerals
Published: 6/12/2015 – Updated: 10/25/2023
There are few things more rewarding than growing delicious vegetables and eating them when they’re at their ripest. Unfortunately, gardening isn’t always simple and, sometimes, you have to leave your garden up to nature. Many experienced gardeners will even tell you that they’ve struggled to yield a good crop at one point in time.
Is limestone good for plants? It most definitely is. Pick up any gardening book or magazine, and you’ll likely see lime for plants included. Reading these publications may make it seem like lime for garden use is the magic solution to all of your garden’s problems. But just what is garden lime, and what does garden lime do? Using lime in the garden is a well-known technique. For centuries, farmers transformed limestone and other rocks into lime powder to spread on their soil. They may not have known what magic worked under the soil, but today, we know lime does several beneficial things.
Learn more about lime’s benefits and how to add lime for plants to nurture a healthy home garden.
Video – Benefits of Using Lime in Your Garden Soil
When correctly applied, lime for plants works to increase the pH of acidic soil. Using lime in the garden creates a healthier base for plants to grow, because they’ll now have access to the nutrients and minerals they need to thrive. The best limestone for gardens is lime which is a powdered or pelletized product made from naturally occurring minerals. Garden lime has been used safely in agriculture for over a thousand years to change the soil pH, making it easier for plants to take up minerals and nutrients from the soil.
Lime also promotes the spread of new, good bacteria in your garden by supplying critical nutrients like phosphorus and zinc in your soil. Limestone also enables you to fertilize your garden more effectively, which means you won’t have to spend a lot of money to have a beautiful garden. To help your home garden reach its full potential, apply garden limestone to your soil.
If you slept through high school biology and chemistry, don’t worry. Modern soil tests conducted at your local garden center or Cooperative Extension office can help you understand your soil’s pH level and whether or not you need to adjust it to grow a lawn, flowers or a vegetable garden. Commercial lime products, such as pelletized lime or powder lime for a garden, make it easy to add just the right amount to adjust soil pH levels.
Where Does Limestone For Gardens Come From?
Garden lime is mined from deposits formed millions of years ago. During that time, shallow seas covered much of the Earth, and prehistoric sea creatures lived in those waters. The creatures’ shells, composed largely of calcium, formed the deposits known today as limestone.
Adding lime to a garden is one of the earliest known techniques. For centuries, farmers have been transforming limestone for plants and other rocks into lime powder to spread on their gardens and farms. In years past, they may not have known exactly what magic worked under the soil, but today, we know garden limestone does several beneficial things to the soil. Limestone for plants in a fruit or vegetable garden is great for:
- Raising soil pH, which is necessary in many parts of the agricultural world to grow crops in acidic soils near human habitation.
- Adjusting the soil pH to grow a wide range of crops that people may not have been able to grow in that area before.
- Adding calcium and magnesium to the soil, two elements needed for vegetable and flower production. A lack of these minerals can cause malformed vegetables, poor fruit set or dropped fruits and vegetables.
- Making nutrients more readily available to plants, especially nitrogen, an essential nutrient that helps plants grow.
- Helping herbicides work more efficiently.
- Aiding beneficial soil bacteria and microbes, which improve the health of your garden soil.
Among all the amendments you’ll want to buy for, garden limestone is among the best things you can bring in. Knowing how much to add, when to add fertilizer to a garden, the type of lime to buy for your garden needs, and asking the important questions like “can hydrated lime be used in the garden” or “when is the best time to apply lime” can help you garden more efficiently and effectively.
Understand Your Garden Soil pH
Before learning more about lime for garden use, it’s important to understand a basic chemistry concept called pH level. The pH scale measures hydrogen ions on a scale ranging from 0 to 14. You’ve probably heard the terms acid and alkaline. Those terms refer to the far extremes of the scale, with 0 being a pure acid and 14 being a pure alkaline. Seven is the neutral midpoint.
Most living organisms prefer a more neutral pH, although variations are common. Different plants prefer different soil pH, depending on where the species evolved.
Blueberry plants, for instance, evolved in the acidic soils of rocky, cold areas, and so they require a garden soil pH of 4 to 5.5 for best production. Blueberries are an extremely acid-loving plant so you may be looking at how to make garden soil more acidic. On the opposite end of the spectrum are vegetables such as asparagus, which can tolerate an extremely alkaline soil pH of up to 8.0, almost unheard of among vegetables.
Most gardening books recommend that vegetable garden soil offers plants a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. This range creates the ideal conditions under which vegetable plants can absorb nutrients and trace minerals through their root system. Complex soil bacteria and fungi attached to the root systems of plants and found in colonies throughout the soil break down organic matter into its components. Water then transfers those components to the plant’s roots. If the soil pH is within the appropriate level for your vegetable plants, they can absorb these nutrients easily and effectively.
When the soil pH isn’t within a usable range for a plant species, diseases occur. For example, blossom end rot, a problem in tomatoes, occurs for many reasons, but one important reason is improper soil pH. When soil pH is too low or too high for tomatoes, they can’t absorb calcium, an important mineral necessary for good fruit development. Black, flat spots called blossom end rot then develop in the tomatoes.
Adding lime to change the soil pH as well as adding simple organic materials, such as a sprinkle of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), makes the calcium and magnesium in the soil available to the tomato plants. They can then effectively use these minerals to produce an abundance of quality tomatoes. As you can see, what goes on in the soil, even at the microscopic chemical level, directly affects the health and productivity of your vegetable garden. Learn more about pH levels, pH test kits and the soil test results.
Using Limestone for Gardening
Types of Lime for the Garden
There are many types of limestone for garden use available at the store, but the best ones to use for your vegetable or flower gardens are pelletized lime and powdered lime:
- Pelletized lime: Pelletized lime is evenly sized pellets of lime. It’s very easy to spread, especially on lawns. You can apply it to the surface, and it is activated by water.
- Powdered lime: There are different types of powdered garden lime. Each uses a different type of agricultural spreader to evenly distribute lime at the surface where it can be tilled into the soil.
Garden lime is usually sold in large bags or sacks. It should be kept dry until you are ready for lime application, so store it in a garage or shed. Water can penetrate the sack and dissolve the lime, making it unusable.
The Benefits of Lime for Lawns
Lime can be very beneficial for lawns. Lawns that have yellow patches, brown patches, weedy areas or an abundance of moss may benefit from an even application of lime. Weeds or mossy patches can both be signs that the pH of specific areas on the lawn differ from the overall pH of the lawn. Moss, for example, grows in acidic conditions — which can be improved by the addition of lime.
Adding lime to your lawn also does more than just raising the soil pH. Limestone contains calcium carbonate, so lime adds calcium to your lawn, which in turn helps grass absorb trace elements such as zinc, copper and others. By adding lime, you’ll boost the overall health of your lawn. An even spread of lime can correct many deficiencies and adjust the pH of the lawn over the growing season so the problems disappear.
Apply lime to lawns in the fall. Rain and cool temperatures help lime move into the soil. It can take up to two years to see a benefit from adding lime to the soil since it moves slowly from the surface to the roots, but don’t overdo lime application.
Which Vegetables Like Lime?
Depending on your soil, you may need to add lime throughout the vegetable garden. Some plants love a little extra lime because they prefer sweeter soils — or soils with a slightly more alkaline quality to them. Remember that adding lime raises the pH level of the soil.
Pay particular attention to beds where the following vegetables and fruits will be grown to ensure proper plant nutrients:
- Tomatoes: Tomatoes need soil pH from 5.5 to 7.5. Soils that are even slightly too acidic won’t produce good-quality tomatoes and will bind calcium and magnesium into the soil where plants cannot access them. Lime for tomatoes changes the soil pH to make those nutrients accessible to tomatoes, preventing blossom end rot and premature tomato drop.
- Soybeans: Adding lime to fields prior to planting soybeans is also an excellent idea. Lime for soybeans also includes all legumes, which prefer a more alkaline soil. Some growers claim that lime can even double a soybean crop yield.
- Squash: Both winter and summer squash love slightly alkaline soil, with tolerance levels of up to 7 for soil pH. Adding lime to most soils improves squash plant yields.
- Asparagus: Among the list of common garden vegetables, asparagus probably loves lime the most. Lime for asparagus is necessary to give the plant the sweet alkaline soil it craves. Asparagus only needs a slightly alkaline soil, but it can tolerate soil pH up to 8. Because asparagus plants are left in the garden year-round, and an asparagus bed produces more crops the older it is, you may need to add a slow-release lime that’s gentle on plants. Pelletized lime offers a good option.
- Cantaloupe: If you plan to grow cantaloupe, adding lime can also improve the amount and flavor of the melons. Cantaloupe prefers a soil pH of 6 to 7.5, leaning toward the alkaline side. Lime for cantaloupe raises soil pH to the alkaline level.
- Onions: Lime for onions raises the soil pH to between 6 and 7, which onions prefer to develop large, tasty bulbs.
- Parsnips: Parsnips need a long growing season, so when adding lime to parsnips, add it in the early spring and again after harvesting parsnips in the late fall. Soil pH for parsnips should be between 5.5 and 7.5.
- Lettuce: Almost all lettuce varieties benefit from a little lime to develop strong, tasty leaves. Lettuce needs a soil pH between 6 and 7.
Which Plants Don’t Like Lime?
Any plants considered “acid-loving” plants shouldn’t be given extra lime. This includes blueberries and ornamental shrubs such as azaleas, rhododendrons and hollies.
If you’re adding garden lime to a flower bed where azaleas and other acid-loving plants are located, keep the lime away from the plants’ roots. Remember that the roots extend under the soil in an umbrella-like shape under the ground. The drip line — the imaginary line around the shrub where the leaves extend in a circle — is the line underground where the roots grow.
When you’re unsure which plants like lime and which don’t, look them up online or in a good reference book.
Can Plants Have a Lime Deficiency?
Plants don’t need lime to survive, but they do need the trace minerals that often accompany lime, such as calcium and magnesium. They also need the soil pH to be within an acceptable range for their species so they can absorb these minerals and other elements from the soil for growth and development.
Plants that suffer from a nutrient deficiency may benefit from lime added to the soil. It’s hard to tell whether a problem is caused by nutrient deficiency, horticultural practices, microorganisms or insects, but you can spot nutrient deficiencies in vegetables and other plants by these symptoms:
- Distorted, misshapen leaves.
- Leaves that are yellow or turn yellow over time.
- Poor production of vegetables.
- Vegetables or fruit fall off the plant prematurely.
- Plant appears stunted or fails to thrive.
While adding lime may not cure nutrient deficiencies, combining it with a good-quality fertilizer containing trace elements of essential nutrients can help. Because lime changes the soil pH, it can make the nutrients more readily available to the plants, and the fertilizer can provide the extra nutrients plants may need. Over time, the plant can correct the nutrient imbalances.
If you’re not sure what’s causing your plant problems, consult your local Cooperative Extension office or take a sample of your plant to your local garden center for diagnosis and assistance.
Adding Lime to Potted Plants or Raised Beds
If you’re constantly battling acidic soil, try a raised-bed or potted plant garden. Raised beds and potted plants provide a controlled planting area you can more easily amend than an in-ground garden. Additionally, bagged soil can be better than what you have naturally.
Raised bed gardens can also be ideal for people living in poor-soil areas or on heavily farmed or pine tree-laden land, which make the soil acidic. You should still check the soil pH annually and add lime as needed, but probably not as much.
How to Store Extra Gardening Lime
Garden lime will “keep” for next year if you’ve purchased a little more than you need. Store it in a cool, dry place like a shed or garage. Stack bags of lime on pallets, blocks or bricks to keep it off of a concrete floor so the bags do not get damp.
Be Smart When Adding Lime to the Garden
Buying garden lime, such as lime from Baker Lime, can be very helpful in the home garden. But before adding lime, make sure you get a soil test to see how much you actually need. You may be pleasantly surprised and need less than you thought you did. Or, you may need more.
Excess lime usually dissolves into the soil, but the effects can last for a long time. That’s another great reason to know exactly how much lime to add to your garden soil before spreading it.
If you’re constantly battling against acidic soil, you may wish to investigate growing a raised bed vegetable garden. Raised beds provide you with a controlled planting area you can more easily amend than an in-ground garden. In addition, when you start with bagged garden soil, your vegetable garden will begin with soil that’s better than what you may have available naturally.
Raised bed gardens can also be ideal for people living in areas with poor soil or on land that’s been heavily farmed or planted with pine trees — which turn soil very acidic. You will still need to check the soil pH each year and add lime as needed, but probably not as much.
Your plants know what they need, so work with nature and not against it when you’re planning your garden. If your soil is naturally acidic, choose plants that thrive in a lower pH soil. Even when adding plenty of good-quality lime products from Baker Lime to the soil, you may still struggle to keep the pH high enough to satisfy alkaline soil-loving vegetables, like asparagus, if your soil is naturally sour or acidic.
Most vegetables, however, are tolerant of a wide range of soil pHs and conditions. If you’ve tried to grow certain vegetables and didn’t have much luck, adding lime may improve your chances of a good harvest.
Where Can You Buy Garden Lime?
If you need garden lime, you’ve come to the right place. Since 1889, Baker Lime has supplied farmers, landscapers and homeowners with high-quality lime mined from our own dolomite deposits in the heart of York County, PA. As one of the most well-known and trusted lime suppliers on the East Coast, we supply customers in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland and beyond.
As you search for limestone for your garden, our friendly staff can answer your questions and provide free quotes! Contact us today to find the limestone you need at the best value.
Related Resources
- How to Apply Garden Lime
- How to Measure Soil pH
- Should You Apply Lime or Fertilizer First?
- Using Lime for Food Plots
- Liming FAQ
