You can smell acetic and pyrolignous acid in the product. Like most commercial "organics", Lily Miller is spiked to make things more soluble. Just a heads up because you will not get an accurate alkalinity calculation using this product. You'll be hanging around 6pH and wondering why another bag or three doesn't change anything. If you can get Lilly Miller you can probably also find Stagreen for a similar price. Smells like lignin sulfonate (strawberry shortcake doll when dry, and floor cleaner in the soil) but doesn't mess with your pH math, if youre OCD like I assume anyone on a specialized grow forum is.
The cheapest source of limestone is athletic field chalk. It is fine enough to take action in soil without much microbial acids. The prilled stuff exists because of farmers applying chalk dust to their neighbors property. Just another opportunity to sell an enhanced product. I can't buy lime chalk legally in my state.
With that said, limestone is a horrible source of calcium, and should be met with sufficient levels of silica when used for increasing alkalinity . I use a very small amount of lime, barn lime mixed with chicken crab/reef scratch. Slow release, like nature, bones and shells aren't fast release.. People who use too much solute lime/bone end up with trichomes made of bone carbonate instead of plant silica. This unwanted carbonate is able to interact with the carboxylic acids (cannabinoids, flavors) we are attempting to fill the trichomes with. Limestone also contains zero trace minerals and naturally acts as an antagonist to many of them.
Good sources of calcium are calcium sulfate (Gypsum, adds sulfur, non oxidizing in vivo, adds no alkalinity), and calcium silicate (wollastonite or basic slag, adds alkalinity via silica).
You can use acids with calcium carbonate but it doesn't eliminate all the antagonistic action of carbonate on other minerals. There's a reason silica is the trendy bottled product right now. Pretty soon growers will catch on to basic slag, which is free aside from shipping, and contains the trace minerals the fertilizer company wants to sell you independently.
