brennewoman said that adding sulfur would help tomato flavor/acid. What kind, when, how much?

I don't use much sulphur, about a tablespoon scratched well into the soil around the maters. If you add lime to the tomatoes, you can add more sulpher. Or you can just put down gypsum, which adds both calcium AND sulpher.

As mentioned, tomatoes need both calcium and sulfur for fruit and foliage development, irregardless of your current soil pH. Calcium products tends to raise soil pH, sulfur products tend to lower soil pH. Thus adding both, or using gypsum, gives you both nutrients, while not bothering your soil pH.

Calcium is extremely important in soils and composting, for getting nutrients to the plant roots. Sulfur, along with masgnesium, is extremely important for helping speed up photosynthesis.

The taste and health of fruits, is usually a function of the availablity of calcium, masgnesium, and sulfur. I like to get extra available Ca,Mg, and S to my plant's foliage and roots, but using Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) in my various compost tea recipes (which are usually loaded with available calcium too, from rotten leaves and grass clippings from the compost).

WandaK - a little story about my first experience with sulfur.

I bought a 25# bag at a farm supply store because a soil test showed a Ph of over 8.0 here. Lots of clay, too, which someone told me the sulfur would help break up. It sure did! I was so happy - the flower beds had never looked better, they drained well and smelled less "murky." Worked semi-quickly, too (months, not years.)

So I sparingly sprinkled some in all the veggie beds, paying more attention to the blueberry/strawberry bed. Man, oh man, the berries went ape-wild that summer. I thought I had the secret to life.

So I sprinkled it all over the lawn (which was fescue/bluegrass and white clover.) Was. Less than a month later - every square foot of lawn that the sulfur touched was bone dead. Dead. Muerto. I soaked the soil, turned it, fertilized it with cottonseed and seaweed emulsion and soaked it some more. Dead.

I reseeded. The seed came up and died promptly. I re-clovered it. Nothing. It has taken a full year for the sulfured lawn spots to recover. I never knew. I know now. Is this common knowledge or am I just ign'nt? I dunno. Just thought I'd ramble on about my dead lawn experience.

O - PS - it also killed every blade of Roman Chamomile I ever grew. Who knew?

-nita