A few pictures here for the library on sodium chloride damage on raspberry.  Leave tissue concentration of sodium is over 250 ppm and chloride over 20,000 ppm (that's 2% of total dry tissue!).  Interestingly accumulation of the micronutrients zinc and copper in these plants is also notably higher than what would be normal for raspberry. 

Great article here by Dr. Robert Mikkelson from the International Plant Nutrition Institute concerning the why and how of liming a soil which is acidic.

http://www.ipni.net/publication/pnt-na.nsf/0/3D04405B134C2C6D85257DA40053D4EA/$FILE/PNT-2014-Winter-03.pdf

Here's the short of it:

Several factors contribute to the acidity of a soil, one being the geologic composition of the base material, another being lots of rain which leaches out calcium and magnesium.  Another contributing factor to soil acidity in agricultural soils is the continual use of nitrogen fertilizers, especially in the same spot over a longer period of time.  Both urea and ammonium, when converted to nitrate by soil micro-organisms, release hydrogen ions, the higher the concentration of which raise the acidity of the soil.

A common grower solution to acidic soils is the addition of ground limestone.  However, while limestone neutralizes acidity, adds calcium and enhances the solubility of phosphate (and consequently availability of phosphorous to the the plant) does not dissolve well at all at pH's above 6.5 (common for soils of the Central Coast) and one would be hard put to realize the aforementioned benefits at this pH.  So if one needs to add calcium to a soil with a pH above 6.5, the better choice would be gypsum, which while it also does not dissolve well in a neutral pH soil, does supply more soluble calcium.

Had the following paper forwarded to me by Tom Gordon from UCD for a further understanding from the literature on what it takes for an organic soil amendment to be suppressive:

In summary, this paper:

1- Uses an immense data set (2423 studies) drawn from 252 papers to explore the efficacy of using organic soil amendments (compost, peat, organic wastes, animal and green manures) in inducing soilborne diseases suppression.

2- Looks at the influence of the state of decomposition of the organic matter. Decomposition either increases or decreases suppressiveness, or in other cases (especially compost) shows more complex responses (see Fig 4 in the paper).

3- States that generally speaking when a specific organic amendment was suppressive to one pathogen it was ineffective or even CONDUCIVE (emphasis mine) to other pathogens (important consideration in our emerging Central Coast soil pathogen complex of Verticillium – Fusarium – Phytophthora – Macrophomina).

4- Finds that chemical and physical aspects of an organic amendment are not as strong predictors of suppressiveness as are enzymatic and microbiological aspects. The paper concludes then that, while certain parameters such as FDA activity, substrate respiration, microbial biomass, total culturable bacteria, fluorescent pseudomonads and populations of the fungus Trichoderma are all useful for predicting suppressiveness of organic matter, no one variable can be considered in isolation to be a reliable and consistent predictor of soil suppressiveness. An integration of methods is therefore suggested.

Read the paper, it's well worth the time you put into it.

I have had a lot of requests for posting the talk I gave last week Thursday at the North American Strawberry Grower's Association meeting in Ventura. Great meeting by the way, totally a who's who of the industry, with top flight scientists from public institutions and the private sector sharing information on a giant range of topics in strawberries. 

http://cesantacruz.ucanr.edu/files/206904.pdf