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Does My Lawn Need a Lime Application?

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How to Tell If Your Lawn Needs Lime

When planting a new lawn or treating your existing one, you’ll likely come across a million different year round lawn care tips that can be overwhelming, especially if you are new to this game. While we all have different preferences when it comes to the look and feel of our lawn, we think everyone can agree that a lush, green, healthy lawn that makes all the neighbors just a little bit jealous.  A lawn care treatment that often flies under the radar is a lime application — a procedure that helps to balance the pH levels of your soil. Lime is a type of soil amendment, or a substance used to improve the health of your lawn, made from limestone that adds calcium to the soil to combat acidity.  Over time your soil can become more acidic, or it might be naturally acidic, which is not optimal for healthy grass to grow in certain environments. If you live in a place with regular or heavy rainfall, you’ll come across this problem at some point — the rain washes away many nutrients that can be hard to restore. Applying a lime treatment can help your lawn recover the nutrients that have been lost to the acidity and even repair the damage caused by it.  But how do you tell if your lawn needs lime?

Signs You Need to Apply Lime

Have you tried just about every fertilizer, weed killer, or soil conditioner you can find and you’re still not sure what’s wrong with your lawn? It’s possible your soil’s pH is off and needs a lime application to fix the problem. Here is how to tell if your yard needs lime:

  • You have sandy or clay soil. Both of these are naturally acidic.
  • Weeds or moss have grown in your yard.
  • The fertilizer you’re using doesn’t appear to be working. Most fertilizers don’t work when the soil’s pH becomes too acidic.
  • Your area experiences a lot of rainfall, especially acid rain. 
  • The grass is yellowing. 
  • You’ve recently experienced a drought and your lawn is having trouble recovering.
  • A soil test reveals the pH of your lawn is lower than 6.2.

How to Detect Soil pH

Cultivating a healthy lawn starts from the ground up (literally). pH is the measurement of how basic or acidic something is. It’s important to consider soil pH when growing plants and grass because it determines how many nutrients they’ll be able to absorb from the soil. The more acidic your soil is, the less nutrients will be available — providing the perfect environment for grass to die and weeds to thrive. On a scale of 0-14, 0 is the most acidic and 14 is the most basic, but plants like somewhere in the middle. Ideally, you want to be somewhere between a 6.5 and a 7.0 for optimal grass growth.  There are a few methods for testing your soil’s pH levels: sending a sample off to a lab, using a soil pH meter, or doing it yourself with a few at-home materials. If you’re opting for the DIY route, take a look at these steps:

What you’ll need

  • Vinegar
  • Baking soda
  • 2 plastic containers
  • Measuring cup
  • Water

How to conduct pH test

  1. Collect one cup of soil from your yard and separate it into the two plastic containers.
  2. Add ½ cup of vinegar to one of the containers. If it sizzles, you have a more basic soil. 
  3. If the soil from the first container does not sizzle, take the second container of soil and add about two tablespoons of water until it’s muddy.
  4. In the second container that is now mud, add ½ cup of baking soda. If it sizzles, you have a more acidic soil. 
  5. If neither container of soil reacts to the vinegar or baking soda, your soil is neutral (lucky you!). 

How and When to Apply a Lime Application

Once you’ve determined your soil’s pH and found it to be acidic (lower than 7 on the scale), it’s time to apply a lime application. Consider aerating your lawn before liming to ensure the soil amendment reaches deep into the soil and produces the best results! Pelletized lime can be purchased at any home improvement store such as Lowe’s or Home Depot and can be applied easily. The pellet version of the ground limestone is more efficient than powder versions because it’s less likely to blow away in the wind and will stay put once it reaches the soil. A 40 pound bag will cover about 1,000 square feet of yard, so plan accordingly based on the size of your lawn. Use a drop or rotary spreader to effectively blanket the grass with a layer of lime — never use your hands because it can irritate the skin.  This process works best when done in the early spring. But, lime should never be applied to a wet lawn, so check the forecast before planning a lime application. It’s also important to note that it takes a few months to start seeing a difference, so be patient and let the lime work its magic.  For more information on when to lime, check out our blog, Benefits of a Spring Lime Application.

Year Round Lawn Care

Still wondering how to tell if your lawn needs lime? DIY lawn care can seem like a daunting task for some, so if you’re not up to the challenge, schedule an appointment with us today. We provide our customers with environmentally friendly and affordable lawn care all year round that keeps your yard looking and feeling healthy. Schedule a service with our professional lawn care team! 

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Does My Lawn Need a Lime Application?

Bedbug inspection

How to Know if Your Hotel Has Bedbugs

Upon entering a hotel room, do you typically reach for the tiny toiletries, take a leap onto the bed, or perhaps start by inspecting for bed bugs? Knowing what to look for is essential. Anticimex Carolinas Service Manager Christian Tweed has shared valuable insights on identifying bed bugs in your hotel room and preventing them from hitching a ride back home with you. And if bed bugs do become an unexpected part of your vacation, remember that Clark’s Pest Control is here to assist!



Q&A with a Pest Professional


How do bed bugs get inside hotels?


Bed bugs are primarily hitchhiking insects as opposed to foraging ones, meaning that they get carried around on people’s clothes and belongings. Someone with an active infestation in their home can easily bring bed bugs to their hotel, but they can also be picked up during travel (airplanes, taxis, and rideshare services) and brought to a hotel room.


What do people misunderstand about bed bugs in hotels?


From a probability standpoint, all hotels will deal with bed bugs at some point in time. If you think about a bed bug’s method of travel, there’s literally nothing a hotel can do to stop them from being carried in. What I have realized is that luxury hotels are more likely to have an aggressive response to dealing with a bed bug case once it’s identified as they tend to have a higher quality of service and a reputation to protect. While this isn’t always the case, it has been my experience more often than not.

Got bedbugs? Call Clark’s at 866-781-4991 today!

What do you recommend travelers do when they get to their room to check for bed bugs?


Most hotel headboards hang directly on the wall. I start my inspection here before even looking at the bed itself. I have found bed bugs, their exoskeletons, and the telltale black stains they leave behind around the edges of or in the crevices of headboards. If the headboard looks clean, move on to looking over the pillowcases and comforter for any signs or stains. You can dig into the bedding as deep as you want here, but I encourage people to look over the top layer of things at the very least.


What are some lesser-known signs of bed bugs in your hotel room?


The specifics of the black stains they leave behind, which as gross as it sounds, are just digested blood as that’s all that bed bugs feed on. If the stains are on a hard surface, they will be small dots as if left behind by an ink pen and will smear into a brownish gray when moisture is applied. If they’re on fabric, they will usually bleed along the fibers making a small diamond, square or X shape.


If there are bed bugs in your hotel room, can they travel home with you?


They absolutely can, however this is easy to prevent. While staying in a hotel, keep as much of your clothing and luggage off the beds as possible. Storing suitcases in the bathroom might sound odd, but it’s an effective method of prevention.

Don’t tackle bedbugs yourself, call Clark’s at 866-781-4991!

What should you do with your suitcase if you suspect your hotel has bed bugs?


When arriving home from a trip, leave your luggage in the garage or on a porch and bring your clothes in one load of laundry at a time. If the clothes are dirty, wash them like you normally would, if they’re clean then run them through the dryer for at least forty-five minutes. Once your suitcase is empty, vacuum over it meticulously (don’t forget to empty the vacuum when you’re done), or if you’re in the right climate, expose it to heat for a few days by placing it in your vehicle (parked in the sun) or for a few weeks in your attic.


The Clark’s Solution


If you brought bed bugs back to you home, Clark’s is here to help. Our Bedbug Control service is designed to eliminate bedbugs and create a safe, comfortable environment.


A Clark’s Pest Professional will do an inspection and recommend a plan of attack to get rid of bed bugs now and prevent them from hatching in the future. Call Clark’s at 866-781-4991 today for more information.



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