Rick, thanks for your easy to read explanation of things. I've learned a lot in those past 12 years or so since my bad experience. I agree with everything you said about all the good things a good uncontaminated compost mulch does and the list goes on and on. Even if a person didn't know anything about soil chemistry and pH, and could care less to find out the benefits, they'd still do OK by just adding good compost mulch and let Mother Nature maintain the balancing.
I want to talk a little bit about about two nutrients I call the 'green team', Nitrogen and Iron. I think Nitrogen is kind of a unique player. He's ever present in soils and his concentrations can vary up and down quite a bit depending plant usage vs bio recycling or fertilizer additions. Plants use it in virtually every aspect of growth, most notably the production of chlorophyll and the color green. But what I find unique is Nitrogen doesn't really care what the pH is; he performs his role equally well in either acidic or basic soils and is utilized equally well by both acidic and basic (alkaline) media loving plants. Pretty versatile character! The second half of 'green team'; teammate Iron, on the other hand, is not so socialable. He's highly insoluable at pH values greater than 7.2 or just slightly over neutral. pH values of the soil media must be adjusted downward to gain full advantage of Iron.
But Nitrogen can be a bad player too, in spite of its versatility--especially this time of the year and how it relates to lily bulbs. If there's excess Nitrogen left in a lily garden soil this time of year, it's likely to be taken into the bulbs still and because of its affinity for water, will cause the moisture content of the bulb to be excessive. When frozen, the expansion during crystal formation ruptures the cell tissue that could kill the bulb. One precautionary safe measure is to add some compost mulch. There's still enough warmth in the ground for microbial activity to further decomposition which in the process will use up some of that extra Nitrogen.
Now again, I like corrections and comments--anybody.
