Hiya - following. Is a good question and look forward to experienced chiming in. My pH isn't much lower than yours but they had no recommendations.

I have read that many consider sulfur organic since it is a naturally occurring mineral.

Ammonium sulfate, however, has been attributed to chemical fertilizing wherein the soil receives too many nitrates in an unnatural way. I'm not experienced with this, though.

I plan on using cover crops and plant rotations to replenish nitrogen. I hope.

Shelley, three of my old soil test that read P1030 lbs. 726 lbs. and 368 lbs. K 1916 lbs. 1120 lbs. and 484 lbs. All of these readings are too high. The PH has run from 5.9 to 7.
I did not take a soil sample this year but I expect my production to be fine if the weather conditions permit.

Here in Arkansas I only use the free test which does not test for N because it can vary so much because of different factors. My tests also have SO4-S on it, which may have something to do with Sulfur, those readings are 318 lbs., 238 lbs. and 66 lbs..

Even though my numbers my be a little off I still get pretty good production if I can get the proper amount of water to the plants.

Larry

Thank you both for responding. Sounds like maybe my soil isn't too bad, just needs the pH lowered a bit. And I'm pretty sure mixing in a few more bales of peat moss or something to lighten it up would go a long way also especially since that is acidic too I believe. I did that a year or so ago and that made it a lot more fluffy, but I don't know if it breaks down or what but the effects don't seem to last. I also have a batch of compost almost done - should be at least 40 gallons.You can never go wrong with adding compost, right?

I'm going to check out Espoma's line of organic fertilizers and see if there is anything I can use to lower the pH. I seem to recall that they had something for blueberries.

Shelley, On the soil surveys I read after moving here, I learned that much of OK has fairly acidic soil, and the average pH for agricultural soil in OK in those surveys was 5.9. Keep in mind that the agricultural soils are managed intensively in order to keep the pH in the range needed by whatever they are growing there. In those soil surveys only ag soil that was being farmed was included---they excluded lawn and garden soil tests from the survey. A pH of 7.4 isn't bad as long as you aren't trying to grow some sort of plant that loves acidity---like blueberries.

You can lower the pH by adding elemental sulphur at the rate specified on the package of sulphur. Sometimes I use Espoma's sulphur but at other times I have bought pelletized sulphur at the feed store and spread it over the whole garden with a rotary fertilizer spreader.

Here in this part of the country, many soils are naturally high in P and in K. Growing up in Texas just 80 miles south of where I now garden, we only had to add N to our gardens. The soil here is very similar to what I was used to there. You likely didn't cause the high P and K, and you really cannot do much to change those numbers, so just don't worry about them. Crops will absorb the P and K over time, but it can take many years for the naturally high P and K levels to deplete....sometimes it takes decades.

Ammonium sulfate is synthetic in origin. You can choose to use organic products that are lower in nitrogen, like blood meal or corn gluten meal. Remember that corn gluten meal also serves as a pre-emergent herbicide, so don't use it in a bed within 4-6 weeks of sowing seeds in the bed. There are lots of organic fertilizers that contain natural sources of nitrogen. I normally use Espoma's Garden-Tone,Tomato-Tone and Holly-Tone on an as-needed basis. They also sell elemental sulphur. Sometimes I use Espoma sulphur and sometimes I use a pelletized version that I can spread over the entire veggie garden with a rotary spreader.

It probably is not politically correct to say this, but I only use a soil test to show me if new ground that I am breaking has any glaring deficiency. After that, I never test the soil again, except maybe occasionally to see how much I've been able to lower the pH. My pH is far too high so I'm always trying to lower it. Other than that, I just choose not to obsess over soil test numbers. To me, the plants tell me the story. If they are happy and healthy, grow well and produce well, I leave the soil alone. While I amended it a great deal our first few years here, nowadays, all I do is add compost and mulch---they feed the soil as they break down and the soil feeds the plants. There is very little that is wrong in a garden that compost won't fix. I suppose that in some places (those with milder weather and a lot more rain than we have) it is possible to add too much compost, or to add compost that has too much manure in it, but in our climate, heat eats compost and breaks it down incredibly quickly, so I've yet to find myself in a situation where I have added too much compost. I have to work really hard, continually mulching and adding compost all year long in order to have any organic matter left in my soil at all at the end of the growing season. Between what the heat breaks down and the plants use up, the organic matter from previous years just seems to evaporate into thin air.

Peat moss isn't my favorite amendment, but sometimes I'll use it to help me break up dense red clay. I'd rather add pine bark fines, but when dealing with a large area, that gets really expensive. The issue with peat moss is that it is dead....not alive like compost, so it isn't as useful. Also peat moss will both hold excessive moisture for long periods of time, which can help your soil stay too wet during periods of extreme rainfall and it also can shed water excessively once it is extremely dry. So, in areas where I have recently added peat moss, I have to pay extra special attention to that area in summer and make sure it never completely dries out, because if it does, it is almost impossible to get the peat moss to absorb water again.

My answer for almost any gardening problem is merely to add more compost. As long as you aren't using compost that contains herbicide residues, compost will only help and won't hurt. (I wouldn't try to grow in a container or raised bed that is 100% compost though, because it drains too fast in our summer heat and stays too dry.)

The main soil amendments I add are home-made compost that does not contain manure (I compost my chicken manure separately and no longer add it to the garden because herbicide residues are being found in some name-brand commercial animal feeds), grass clippings and chopped/.shredded leaves. If I pile the shredded leaves on top of the garden beds in fall or early winter, they mostly break down by planting time. I pile on grass clippings as mulch all summer long. As they decompose, they feed the soil. Between the chopped and shredded leaves and the grass clippings, I'm adding something to the soil surface year round, and the nutrients from those get carried down into the soil in various ways....like when I am digging in order to plant, or when rain or irrigation water carry the nutrients into the soil, or via the action of various insects and critters that tunnel in the soil.

If I find an area of the garden that seems depleted of organic matter after a long, hot summer, sometimes I'll add pine bark fines to it in great quantity to get the soil back into good shape before I plant in late winter or early spring. After a few really horrible drought years, I added big chunky bark. I know the conventional wisdom says not to do that because it will interfere in the availability of nitrogen, but haven't observed that sort of problem myself. With dense red clay, I find that the more bark mulch and pine fines I add to the soil, the better it gets. Sometimes I go into the woods in winter and scout for dead trees that have been decaying a few years, and then I scoop up that beautiful decayed wood and haul it to the garden. I have to be really, really careful when I do that because I have found snakes and rodents in that decaying/decayed wood sometimes in the dead of winter.

Larry, That S04-S quantifies the amount of readily available sulphur in the soil. Not all sulphur is available in a form that plants can readily take up, so they make the distinction so you know how much readily absorbable sulphur your soil contains.

Dawn

Thank you very much, Dawn. I hadn't thought about using pine bark fines but I did see it recently at TLC in bags, so I'll get some of that to mix in, along with some sulphur. I will pass on the ammonium sulfate for now - thanks for explaining what it is.