I'd use iron sulfate before I'd use aluminum sulfate, but neither will have as much effect as sulfur. I may be wrong, but I think the main reason that iron sulfate is faster acting than sulfur is because one of the effects of high pH is iron deficiency. The iron sulfate doesn't bring the pH down nearly as much, but unless you've got pH like David52 and I have, the iron sulfate will provide some readily available iron right away (around here, the pH is high enough that the iron in iron sulfate is not available). Something that can very quickly (and very temporarily) lower the pH are to add a quart or twoo of vinegar to a 5 gallon bucket of water and use that to water. If there are pool supply places nearby, you can probably buy some granules that can be added to the water to drop the pH in pools. I think most of these have sulfur in them and turn the water into either sulfurous or sulfuric acid. If you get really desperate, you can use muriatic acid (I think it's something like 15-20% HCL). If you use muriatic acid, make sure to add the acid to the water and not the other way around. These approaches are fast, but very temporary. With your weather and native soil, a temporary fix may be enough, since that'll give time for the soil to move toward the norm for your area. Karen--A number of things contribute to making soils either acidic or alkaline. Weather is actually a big factor. Areas that get a lot of rainfall tend to have more acidic soil and areas that are arid tend to have alkaline soil. This is mostly due to the minerals and elements that get washed away with the water (somewhat related to this, arid areas often suffer from problems with salt buildup). In recent years, the acidifying effect of rain has become even more pronounced where acid rain is an issue. There are other factors, as well. For example, there are areas in Colorado and Utah that have acidic soil despite being arid. The reason is that the soil content is mostly crushed granite. I would assume that southern Ohio gets enough water, so your alkalinity must be due to the makeup of the soil itself.

Posted by gardengal48 PNW zone 8 (My Page) on Tue, Oct 2, 12 at 18:52 ---"RpR, for someone rather new to these forums, you certainly have developed some rather strong opinions about what and who are appropriate topics or meaningful posters. Since there is a considerable history of meaningful and informative and......get ready for the BIG one........accurate posts by those you seem to disparage, maybe you should just sit back and watch and learn before putting your foot in it any further, hmmmm??????"--- Hmmmm. Did you write this right after going over to the mirror and saying- Mirror, mirror on the wall...?

Thanks. Things are doing better now. I have a rapi-test ph tester, get an approximate PH then do the math to figure out how much sulfer to add and add it. Things are doing better but but it's still challenging. I tried growing tomatoes in a large pot the same time I planted them in the soil and they are twice as big in the pot and respond better to fertilizing. Everything gets lots of compost. Also tried a few beds with peat moss, gypsum, and compost. They don't seem to be working as well as the sulfer but did make a small difference. Peas are doing good. Tomatoes okay. pole beans got lots of pest problems from chinese rose beatles and some maggot that burrowed into the leaf petioles. They still produced beans though. Sweet potatoes don't seem to be making tubers, despite high P & K levels. Neither is the Kalo. They all have organic fertilizer mixed in and receive fish emulsion every two weeks.

Yeah ... lots of critical things to consider such as initial and changing pH effects*, buffering, multivalent cations, anionic and cationic micronutrients, and zeolite like ion exchange surfaces on soil particles, which make it a play day for chemistry discussions. Then the attack and breakdown of plant and animal litter to slow release nutrients brings up neat microbiology and biochemistry aspects. Material science then decides to manipulate the situation with osmotic release and diffusion of encapsulated nutrients. And hydroponic principles try to partially play nature taking over the hydrology and lighting it up. Physics kicks ideas in there on this last aspect. For instance did you know that fluorescent light indeed glow when struck by energy (as you know), but much of the light intensity flashes through a series of distinct colors at 60 times a second? * Plants cheat neatly by manipulating ion exchange release of cationic nutrients. They knock off ammonium, potassium, magnesium, calcium and other positively charged ions by producing acid(s) to knock it off. H+ alone can cause the exchange but if the acid is on a small organic base (anion) like oxalate this organic can diffuse around and pull at the cations on soil that the plant wants and help knock it off, helping in the "weathering" breakdown of soil too. Chelators made by plants and microbes make it really interesting too. They diffuse around and hold certain critical nutrients so tightly that the plant has the choice of finding more, having a deficiency (specific nutrient starving), making a stronger chelator to take it back, and/or breaking the chelator down to free the nutrient. Now the fun parts ... the plant one might be considering is not be alone. A group of similar or different roots might be working together AND competing in that patch of soil, with different players at different depths Trees cheat and certain non woody plants cheat and go low. Moles, gophers and field mice run through this soil zone toox playing their games. No soil contact then no nutrient uptake, no root then no nutrient collection there for the plant, loss of stored nutrients and need to spend energy replacing the root. And there are smaller life forms co-inhabating the soil with the roots that are also directly or indirectly effected by soil pH. Let's put them into three classes as those that (1) don't generally effect a plant much, (2) can hurt the plant, or (3) can help the plant. Let's see ... hurting a plant is bad, unless it hurts a seriously competitive plant more. Helping a plant is good, unless it's again that serious competitor. Plants are not stand alone organisms in naturem. They live in community with microorganisms. So what if the soil pH helps support the growth of a microbe that can grow all over your plants roots? Sounds bad I know, but there are those three classes mentioned above. If your microbe is a pathogen that is bad. If it doesn't attack the plant but runs out and breaks down nearby leaf litter, great free food. It it doesn't hurt your plant but by being on root surfaces can compete with and stop pathogenic microbes from getting a foothold, great a free natural inoculation for immunity. There was a company called Eden Bioscience a couple decades ago here in the PNW that made an interesting observation. In large scale evergreen seedling production for forestry sometimes there were large scale fungal blights. Sadly alot of the seedlings all died at once in mass. However, sometimes there were a few seedlings near each other that did not succumb! In fact they looked totally healthy! When isolating bacteria, yeast and filamentous fungi from the surfaces of these plants they found that certain kinds could be grown in the lab that protected seedlings from attack, when sprayed onto them. These microbes grew best in their optimal pH range. They indeed colonized the plants, in this case leaf surfaces. And their presence did protect the leaves from pathogen attack. Obviously similar things must be happening in nature in the leaf canopy and also soil root zone of plants. So when a plant likes acidic pH 5 - 6 soil, is this just because nutrients are more available it? When I went to school, in what now seems like the dark ages, most plant physiology books focused almost solely on this. Or is it because beneficial microbes helping feed or protect the plant need that pH? My firm assumption is that both chemical and microbial pH dependent effects interact to make an optimum environment for that plant. And that some plants in the natural environment survive best, rather than grow best, at their optimal pH range. Why do many fungi sour (strongly acidify) what they are busy rotting? Niether competive microbes nor does the dieing plant tissue like it. The fungus gets more. This is exactly why you want to check the pH in the soil that you might be soon preparing for your new vegetable or herb garden this spring. Too basic, your plants starve. Too acidic, the pathogenic fungi don't starve. Then like the heirloom story of The Three Bears ... there's one pH that's just right.