Yeah, there is all sorts of "information" about worms and what not to feed them, most of it just hogwash. Worms, like the compost pile itself, will eat just about anything that ever showed a sign of life. I give mine all the citrus and onions that I have as waste. Never heard a complaint. I've given them large amounts, small amounts,mixed onions and citrus, coffee grounds, bread, meat scraps, cat food, garlic...well you get the picture. enjoy your compost piles and your worm bins steve

I don't have any idea how much they used. There were fist-sized clumps of lime throughout the pile. I busted them up as I came across them. I thought about testing it, but then I'd lose that seat-of-the-pants, trial & error mystique of gardening ... or it could be I'm just too lazy to locate the county extension office. Testing it will be the smart thing to do, though. Save me some money and time.

Lime sulfur can be sprayed at any time of year (except when trees are in flower to avoid harming pollinators). It is just a fungicide - and a natural one at that - and is used frequently to combat fruit tree ailments that can occur after leafout - like scab. One of the recommendations for treating scab is to spray just as the leaves are falling, as well as during the dormant period and again as the tree is leafing out or until the climate conditions for scab no longer exist. In my area, that was well into June this year :-) It is sulfur that can become phytotoxic to foliage. Adding lime to the mix reduces the phytotoxicity - the more lime, the less phytotoxic the mix. The lime itself has no antipathogenic effect. It is included only to neutralize the sulfur. Copper fungicides can also produce phytotoxic results. But using them at this time of year hardly creates any sort of serious threat of phytotoxicity. Any leaves treated with dormant spray (horticultural oil) and/or copper or lime sulfur fungicides - all of which are considered natural or "organic" controls - are harmless when included to compost in a moderate amount.

Tanya, gardengal48 is correct, that home pH tests are quite accurate, particularly for pH with the litmus method. I use a Mosser Lee "Soil Master" (tablet/solution) test kit for pH and N,P,K with less than 10% variance from lab tests. Correct about distilled water vs tap water, but I find that a probe has a wider pH variance than litmus (properly done). IMO even a swimming pool pH test kit is better than a probe. But, just knowing what the pH is - is not much help when it comes to determining how much, of what kind of lime to add. She is also correct that multiple applications of compost will tend to neutralize soil pH. But has any elemental sulphur been applied to acidify the soil? That said, Sandy is quite correct, with regard to a lab test needed for determining pH, that will provide a liming requirement based on pH BUFFER, (capacity of soil to resist pH change, sometimes called reserve acidity) which a home pH test cannot provide, since the testing is based on Cation Exchange Capacity - regarding the degree of Hydrogen (+) and Aluminum (+++) ions available in the soil. The buffering test is simply an exact 8.0 pH solution that a lab adds to the soil sample incrementally, to determine how much lime is needed, to bring the soil up to 6.5 pH. It can be done at home, but most folks cannot do the math to make that lime quantity determination. So the real issue is: whether any lime is needed in the first place (what IS the base pH?), and if needed, how much of what kind of lime is necessary (over time) to change it? pH regulates to what degree nutrients are available for plant uptake, with calcium (CA) and magnesium (MG) being the primary micronutrient data points. Therefore, no lime determination should be made without a FULL nutritional value analysis too. A Routine + micronutrient + organic content lab analysis of a soil sample is an accurate basis for such a determination, and is $$ well spent - at least once. Dolomitic lime is usually the recommended liming agent, with a fineness rating: 5.0% of granules are retained on 2 mm mesh with zero effectiveness. 5.0% of granules passed 2 mm mesh but retained on 0.15 mm with effectiveness of 0.6. 90.0% of granules passed 0.15 mm mesh with effectiveness of 1.0. Which provides a 95% effective pH change agent, with effective watering-in required in several separate applications. Since you are in Oregon, you may be able to obtain the Nutrite brand of Canadian horticultural lime that I find to be best for my own use. Now the issue of soil structure (tilth) comes to the fore - with regards to percolation. Should be good, with successive compost amendments - even skipping a year - if such additions were 'substantial' and had a fairly high humus content, since the greater volume of compost added into soil, will decompose to 'nothing' in a year - but the humus content remains for centuries. Since Tanya is a composting specialist, and has been adding compost to garden soil for several years, it is not likely that pH is the main issue with poor (bell?) pepper yields. Soil testing is needed as a baseline, certainly. However, Tanya - my 'gut feeling' is leaning toward moisture and/or fungus or nematode issues with the pepper plants, rather than pH. Did the peppers become 'wilted' during the growing season even when water was available? Did the pepper plant roots have any 'knots' or 'galls' on them? What were yields of other veggie harvests like? What is the watering regime that is being used in the garden, specifically regarding the pepper plants? What was the watering regime for making compost? Still questions to be answered, before we can help much more, "sight unseen"... Robert