Should I fertilize and/or lime my pastures?

The decision to fertilize or lime your pastures depends on the condition of the soils, your goals and objectives for the pasture, and your economic constraints. To determine if you should add fertilizer or lime to your pasture, you first need to determine three things: 1) is the soil deficient in nutrients; 2) does meeting those deficiencies align with your goals and objectives for the pasture; and 3) can you afford the cost of the fertilizer and/or lime? Answering these questions will help determine if adding the fertilizer and/or lime to your pasture will increase productivity sufficiently enough to warrant the additional costs. It is relatively simple to determine if the soil is deficient in certain nutrients. Your local Cooperative Extension office can provide information on collecting soil samples from your pasture. They can also tell where to send the samples for analysis and how to interpret the results. Based on those results, you will be able to determine what nutrients are deficient and how much might be needed to make the soils more fertile. Your local Cooperative Extension agent can make recommendations on what type of fertilizer to use and how much to use. When determining whether to apply fertilizers or lime to your pastures, you need to have realistic expectations on what your pasture can produce. If you have noted a decline in productivity in the pasture over time and you determine, through soil analyses that your soil fertility is not what it should be, then it probably will be economical to add fertilizer and/or lime to your pasture. On the other hand, if you simply want the pasture to produce more, even if the soils are naturally fertile, then economically it probably will not pay out over the long term to add fertilizer and/or lime. Typical fertilizers contain a combination of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). Lime (calcium carbonate) is typically applied to help adjust low soil pH. Fertilizers containing all three elements are typically more expensive than fertilizers with only one or two of the nutrients available. In most pasture systems, nitrogen, after water, is the most limiting nutrient. Often even light applications of nitrogen produce large yields in forage production. Phosphorous and potassium are typically not limiting for most grasses and legumes in most pasture systems. Therefore, applications of nitrogen are more likely to be economically feasible than applications of phosphorous or potassium.

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