I don't know what Steve Solomon's COF is, but if your pH is close to 8, you should not be adding any lime to it.

Is your soil in need of calcium or magnesium? If so, I think that gypsum could be substituted for lime as the calcium sulfate it contains is relatively pH neutral. A bit of epsom salts could also supply some magnesium. Most of us in areas receiving abundant rainfall suffer from the leaching of calcium and therefor I think Mr. Solomon recommends replenishing the amounts lost to harvest removal through said leaching.

Can you help us out? I don't know who Steve Solomon is nor do I know what COF stands for. Can you provide a link?

It would also help a lot to know where you live?

"It would also help a lot to know where you live? "

I was assuming somewhere in the American Southwest, since I thought Zuni was another word for the Pueblo American Indians, but I checked Zuni's member page and see Ontario (transplanted from Texas).

A pH of 8 made sense when I was thinking the Southwestern US, but I would have thought Ontario would be more likely to be acidic. I just did some searching and found that there are areas in Ontario with high pH.

I would definitely avoid the lime. I think Solomon's approach was geared to people living in areas with low pH soil.

Steve Solomons writings can be found in the homesteading section of the agricultural library.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil and Health

Steve Solomon claims that he doesn't worry about soil PH, and that he just gives the soil what it needs and the natural processes will neutralize the soil PH. I fairly diligently follow his books, but then again, I live in Western Oregon where soils tend to be somewhat acidic, and universally low in calcium and magnesium. So limes are quite helpful here. I would have a hard time using his COF if my PH were 8.0. But alot of people use this formulation in various parts of the country with fine results.
Is your soil low in Ca or Mg? If not, and your PH is high, limes are unnecessary. You can also use gypsum and epsom salts to get Ca and Mg, but keep in mind that will be adding quite a bit of sulfur to your soil as both of those are sulfur based. But they will tend to lower the PH.
You can also use cottonseed meal in your COF as the seedmeal component, as CM is very acidic.
Also, I really have no idea if the small amount of limes mixed into the relatively large volumes of soil have much of an effect on PH.

As the OP isn't telling us why they want the pH lowered, I'm not sure the ingredients are going to lower pH. You'll want some sort of sulfur to do that. Lime raises pH and that recipe is at best neutral.

Dan

Steve Solomon point is that the regular addition of compost will with time buffer the PH of the soil.

No thanks to the OP I found out what COF stands for and what it is. It stands for complete organic fertilizer. Here is Solomon's recipe for it.

4 measures of canola seed meal or cottonseed meal;

1/2 measure of ordinary agricultural lime;

1/2 measure of dolomite lime;

1 measure of bone meal or rock phosphate or high phosphate guano;

1/2 to 1 measure of kelp meal.

The recipe is fine but to call it complete and then to imply that it is the be-all/end-all for organic gardening fertilizers is a little over optimistic to say the least. I guess it is "complete" because it has N, P, K, calcium, and micronutrients in it. My soil is made from pulverized limestone. With a pH around 8.0 to 8.5, I don't need any more lime.

I did not read anything else. If Solomon has a point about the regular addition of compost regulating the soil's pH, then I would agree with that. I think you need to add organic fertilizer to hurry up that process but Solomon's recipe would not be my first choice for a fertilizer. In fact since I can't get any of his ingredients except by special order, I would tend to make my own recipe from locally available materials that was more tuned into my soil conditions.

I'm using Solomon's recipe this year. Love it (well the plants are).But I have sandy, acid soil.

"No thanks to the OP ...."

Dude, harsh.

I haven't read Steve Solomon's book, "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades." The title implies that he is writing with a specific region in mind. Here in Madison, Wisconsin, our local soil is high in clay, and contains abundant calcium and magnesium. It is improved with regular additions of compost, but we don't need to be adding lime, at least, not in our garden. We grow tomatoes here, and blossom end rot, due to low calcium, is never a problem.

"No thanks to the OP ...."

Dude, harsh.

Yeah, I'm still a little honked off that the OP asked a question and then dropped off the board. We can't help much in the absence of a little more info. Apparently the OP asked a question about a regional guru and expected us to know about him and the acronyms he uses. That forces US to do the research to get information that the OP might have provided much more easily. If the OP lives in Ontario, what's up with his high soil pH??? That's likely the root of the problem. And if he lives in Ontario, what does Steve Solomon have to do with the price of tea in China?

OK,dchall. First of all, I was introduced to Steve Solomon's COF thru Mother Earth News, hardly a regional website. Secondly, if you aren't familiar with the COF recipe, I would expect you let someone more familiar with it respond. And third, my location has little to do with the question. I am using raised beds with purchased soil and amendments. No telling where they came from, but the pH is high.

As for unfamiliar acronyms, what the heck is an OP anyway?
I am new to this forum and will thank you not to reply if I bother to use it again.

My only concern with this formulation is the unavailability of the bone meal and rock phosphate in alkaline soils. These materials need an acidic soil to dissolve and make the nutrients available to the plants. Phosphate guano is no available in this area in bulk.

"what the heck is an OP anyway? "

OP is Original Poster.

I live squarely in the bio region in the title of Steve Solomon's book, which I read and found very useful. I use a modification of his recipe as follows:

4 measures of alfalfa meal;
1/2 measure of ordinary agricultural lime;
1/2 measure of dolomite lime;
1 measure of rock phosphate;

1/4 to 1/2 measure of kelp meal (sometimes).

Also, I modify it when I need to - omitting the lime when fertilizing my blueberries, for example.
I don't know if it's stated anywhere, but I'd just modify the recipe per what you need and have available or think/hear might work better. I'm pretty sure he's not fixed on canola or cottonseed meal, or even needing both phosphate sources, or the kelp meal for that matter. I'd keep it easy an inexpensive to start...

Touché for zuni!

LOL

Lloyd

Here is a link w/ more info if anyone is interested. I read just about everything I can, some things work for me, some don't, some things I pick apart and use bits and pieces. Some things just give me ideas for something new.

Good gardening, Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: COF

Slavish adherence to formulae without understanding context is a bad approach to anything, let alone to gardening.
We should be careful to get out of an experience all the wisdom that is in it -- not like the cat that sits on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. -- Mark Twain

Dan

OK,dchall. First of all, I was introduced to Steve Solomon's COF thru Mother Earth News, hardly a regional website. Secondly, if you aren't familiar with the COF recipe, I would expect you let someone more familiar with it respond. And third, my location has little to do with the question. I am using raised beds with purchased soil and amendments. No telling where they came from, but the pH is high.

I'm trying to figure out how this issue went wrong. No matter where you read about him, Steve Solomon is not a household name. Nor is he a popular forum name. Had you searched the forums, you would have realized that. Then the COF thing is not only a new acronym, it is a foreign concept. So this got off to a bad start. But so do lots of questions. When you did not help us to help you, things deteriorated, at least for me.

You are new so you probably have not read many of the problems and resolutions here. It is almost always important where the original poster lives because that is where your soil and environment are. If you lived in Florida and someone gave you an Alaska answer, that might not be very helpful.

Please, no hard feelings. We will cooperate with you if you cooperate with us.

To summarize the good points of the solution, you should probably not slavishly follow someone elses recipe. You should not use materials that worsen your soil situation. You should probably look for cottonseed meal to improve your soil. One thing that has not been mentioned is growing plants adapted to your region and soil. If you don't want to grow blueberries, then your soil might be fine as it is.

Thank you.

Actually, Steve Solomon's latest recipe for COF is 8 (not 4) parts seedmeal, to 1 part bone meal, and 1 part lime mixture. Plus whatever else. I confirmed this personally via email to SS. I have read and reread his book about organic veg gardening in the PNW and I got the impression that the COF mixture was tailored to our region. So I was a bit confused when he moved to Tasmania and continues to use the same COF formula, literally on the other side of the world.

I happen to like what Steve has to say. He doesn't promote irrigation because he knows water will soon be a big issue world wide. You can grow food without irrigation but it's a steep learning curve. He also promotes area-adapted dryland farming seed varieties as well as no till, compost and most soil-food web ways of doing things. He does have an interesting viewpoint on mulching and after this years experiment, I'm thinking he's on to something.

And as for why he's still using his COF in Tasmania.....well it sounds pretty acidic down there too. If fact, most of the garden books I've picked up assume you have acidic soil. And I'm beginning to think that if you apply compost constantly then pH is unimportant after a year or two.

I try not to be slavish to any one scientist's/person's viewpoint on gardening. I use their theories and experiment in my own garden. Science has a nasty habit of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Zuni, you might want to ask Steve Soloman. He is pretty good about responding to questions on his blog. I asked him a couple and got a good response.

shebear said "I try not to be slavish to any one scientist's/person's viewpoint on gardening. I use their theories and experiment in my own garden. Science has a nasty habit of not seeing the forest for the trees."

I totally agree. In my opinion gardening is similar to using recipes. Thanks for the ideas and then suit them to our own situations.

Concerning this site and using abbreviations such as COF is fine but somewhere near the top of the thread someone should point out what the abbreviation stands for so those of us not in the know understand what it means.

I had the opportunity to attend a Basic Soils Seminar presented by Dr. Dan Skow D.V.M., based on the work of Dr. Cary Reams' Biological Theory of Ionization. The Doctors considered dolomitic limestone a "no-no" unless there happened to be too much available nitrogen. It seems that magnesium releases nitrogen "pound for pound" from the soil.

The book HOW TO Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons also advocates the use of dolomite limestone on pages 19 & 21 of the 1979 hardbound edition. However, also on page 21 under the heading SOIL MODIFIERS, Dolomitic Lime is characterized as "(a) good source of calcium and magnesium to be used in acid soils. Do not use lime to Âsweeten the compost pile; it results in a serious loss of nitrogen."

It would seem from the previous quote that the reason for the nitrogen loss is considered to be due to the use of lime while Dr. Reams lays it directly on the magnesium in the dolomitic lime.

Terran

I take the biodynamic gardening advice with a grain of salt..A lot of magic and mythology involved. I have excellent results with Soloman's recipe, booming and healthy plants. Too much of anything is bad, his recipe is a good basic mix.