I am not familiar with Steve Solomon's recipes, however you should never add lime to soil that is alkaline. Doing so could raise your pH to unacceptably high levels, causing severe nutrient deficiencies in plants.

If your soil pH is high and you irrigate with hard water, then you should ammend your soil with elemental sulphur or aluminum sulphate, or inject sulphuric acid into your irrigation system.

Yikes! No more lime if you are on limestone - no calcium or magnesium either since most limestone has a good amount of dolomite in it. Gypsum may be ok, since it is more acidic (limestone chemically altered by sulfuric acid). However, you normally only add gypsum to break up the clay particles, not really for nutrients. Also, make sure it is agricultural gypsum, NOT builders gypsum (plaster); if you put powdered plaster outside it will turn into a solid rock when it gets wet (Ag gypsum is already hardened plaster that has been ground up).

I'd use pine needle mulch or compost to neutralize the ph.

Fertlizers are only used to replenish missing nutrients. You should get your soil tested first, rather than follow some arbitrary recipe. Or look for a recipe for alkaline soils. Most plants prefer neutral to acidic soil, so if all these recipes call for lime you may be setting yourself up for a disaster. Unless you are xeriscaping.

Whoa, hold up a second:
- limestone has a good amount of dolomite in it.
Some lime is dolomite (calcium carbonate - magnesium carbonate). Any other lime that isn't dolomite, well, isn't. It's like saying many vehicles are made of cars. When some vehicles are cars and some are not.
-Gypsum may be ok, since it is more acidic
Gypsum is not a type of lime. It has no effect on soil pH in the vast majority of cases. The only effect is on sodic soils even then the effect is secondary to decrease in sodium that it can help facilitate.
-I'd use pine needle mulch or compost to neutralize the ph.
Pine needles will not effect your pH. But that,s one of the most frustratingly persistent myths out there.
-You should get your soil tested first, rather than follow some arbitrary recipe.andMost plants prefer neutral to acidic soil, so if all these recipes call for lime you may be setting yourself up for a disaster.
I agree 100%

- limestone has a good amount of dolomite in it. Some lime is dolomite (calcium carbonate - magnesium carbonate). Any other lime that isn't dolomite, well, isn't.

You're both right in that dolomite can either mean dolomitic limestone or the mineral itself (magnesium carbonate).

One gardener I correspond with that lives in the San Diego area (very alkaline soil) tells me that he must add calcitic lime to his garden each year or he will have Blossom End Rot and other problems. So it may well be that in soils that tend to be alkaline the Calcium Carbonate (lime) is not very readily available to plants in which case more may well need to be added so it is.
However, which lime you use also depends on what your soil needs and if it needs some magnesium then dolomitic lime probably is what is needed. If Calcium Carbonate is what may be needed then a calcitic lime should be applied. But which is used needs to be applied in the right amount or it will do little good. Whether gypsum would be any benefit depends on many things about the soil also. More than likely applying enough Epsom Salts (Magnesium Sulfate) to your soil to make much difference would probably be cost prohibitive.

Dolomite is not magnesium carbonate. It is calcium magnesium carbonate: CaMg(CO3)2.
If you're dealing with just magnesium carbonate (MgCo3), you're not dealing with lime. It's just magnesium carbonate. If you're dying to put a common name to it, you would call it "magnesite"
I know it's nit picky but I feel that getting into the habit of misusing a term can often lead to confusion down the road. See the "peat" vs. "peat moss" threads for a good example. I'm just trying to head stuff off at the pass.

I know, I realized my mistake after posting but this forum doesn't allow edits, or at least that I haven't found a way yet.

Yeah, it's a bummer. That's why I'm stuck with cobalt where my carbonate should be in my post up there. : P

It was said "One gardener I correspond with that lives in the San Diego area (very alkaline soil) tells me that he must add calcitic lime to his garden each year or he will have Blossom End Rot and other problems."

Well that gardener doesn't understand blossom end rot. It's a transport problem -- the calcium doesn't get to the blossom end of the tomato because of erratic/uneven irrigation.

Further, San Diego soil already has more than enough calcium for tomatoes & everything else s/he may want to grow. That's the "normal" condition there, due to the arid climate.

Further, folks in that region often are coping with DG (decomposed granite) -- challenging to irrigate appropriately.

Jean,
who gardened in Long Beach, CA, -- a tad north of San Diego -- for 30-some years

Thank you for confirming what I suspected, that the lime would most likely be detrimental. For vegetable beds, we will be building up. I will include some native soil but will be adding significant amounts of compost. For my perennial beds, we will just keep top dressing with compost and eventually we know the soil will be better. For fertilizer, we will be using Yum Yum mix for now (recommended by a nursery that has a lot of experience with these soils) and eventually will build a similar mix myself, hopefully a lot cheaper.

If you could replace the use of gypsum with more manures you would get even better results. That old gyypsum advisory keeps hanging around but I think there is little real use for it. Earthworms that eventually drill miles and miles of tunnels in your garden do not come up for gypsum. They come up for manures and coffee grounds not to overlook all other organic matter. They do not eat and transpose or convert gypsum to make their valued casts.

Jean, that gardener understands Blossom End Rot very well. That he states that if he does not add calcitic lime to his planting beds and does not get BER does indicate that probably the lime has something, at least as much as adding egg shells, antacids, Epsom Salts, and other home remedies does. He also states that if that calcitic lime is not added to his soil he will get BER.
Keep an open mind because there may be something to what he tells me.

Keep an open mind because.....

Well now, isn't that a case of the pot calling a kettle black?? LOL!

The Steve Solomon recipe was developed for the PNW Cascadia bioregion, characterized by heavy winter rains, and soils that are generally acidic and deficient in Phosphorous, Calcium and Magnesium, while abundant in Potassium. Seedmeals, bone meals, and lime are good candidates for soil additives in this region. Outside of Cascadia, your mileage may vary.