Mark, Perhaps I miss read your response to my earlier following up on Miss Kumin's topics of concern to her but I didn't nor would I recommend nitrates, etc, via " killing Central Asiatic with kindness", au contraire! The material grown here I specifically mentioned was on base poor granites, we only ever use, if we use fertilisers, one based on soluble natural seaweed due to certain mineral deficiencies here. The nitrates 'issue' is a self inflicted Dutch problem with which they are seriously saddled today and one sadly transferred, no doubt unwittingly and not just restricted to nitrates, to Oregon Bulb Farms by their previous Dutch owner but who otherwise was a man, the late Jan DeGraff, who wrought considerable 'magic' to the cultivation e.g. of lilies but he was working to the methods in existence pre and post war, methods now known to be a high risk series of strategies not relevant to our work here in Scotland at all. If I misread your response to my previous one to Miss Kumin I apologise. Iain -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 6 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 66815 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len/ The Professional version does not have this message