[Barbee]

Originally Posted by PureHarvest

Do not till pelleted lime into your beds without letting rain or irrigation break them down into powders first.
You are basically returning the pellets into powder (it was powder before it was a pellet) by doing this, thus increasing the surface area of the lime for better and uniform reactivity.

Your test shows what you need (like barbee said). You can determine exactly what purchased limestone has in it and be confident you are adding the right elements. Limestone is as natural as ash.
Ash is fine option, but you don't have a really good idea of the exact elemental composition or quantity without getting it analyzed. So, how much you use will be a guess, and going with someone else's rate is blindly following their experience based on their soil and climate.
Again, not wrong to use, but getting a test done implies you are looking for a some level of precision, and not following that up with known elements of specific quantities is sort of counter productive.
Like if you had a blood test or stool test and it shows you are very low in iron. You know you can take an iron source, but how much and from what source. You could just say, well, I'll take molasses. Well, how much? How much do I need based on what is contained in molasses versus ground beef? You would need to know what each source contains, then figure on how much of either you need to consume to get to where you want to be.
Hope that makes sense.

Thank you!
And let me add if you need an organic source of any element you can usually find it. Or you can use a mix of both. I have found that synthetic ferts tend to fix things quickly but will not last as long in your soil. Organic additions take a bit longer to work but tend to work for longer. I use both in my garden depending on what i need to fix and what my goal is.