On 30 Mar 03 at 14:00, Arnold wrote: > The bulb is native to Central Portugal and as the name implies it > grows in calcareous soil, due to the presence of limestone but > Henning Christiansen has shown the pockets of soil it grows in have > been found to be very acid around pH 5.9 > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… pH 5.9 is not "very acid". Horticultural neutrality (as opposed to chemical neutrality) is often taken as pH 6.5. Blueberries, which are real acid lovers, demand a pH somewhere down around 4.0. That's truly acid soil! "Somewhat acid but with reasonable amounts of calcium" would be a better description. (I'm assuming that the adjacent limestone puts some calcium into the soil -- did he analyze it for that?) -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada "To co-work is human, to cow-ork, bovine."
