And my suggestion about Nitrates ...
"Man of Many Minds"
E. Everett Evans
We did give them Nitrates here, but that was because they had exhausted the elements in the dirt floors of their prison huts.
"Man of Many Minds"
E. Everett Evans
We answer-because, in the first place the rains which quickly descend through the open soil, wash down out of the reach of vegetation the soluble fertilizing matters, especially the Nitrates, for which the soil has no retentive power; and in the second place, from the porosity of the soil, the air has too great access, so that the vegetable and animal matters of manures decay too rapidly, their volatile portions, ammonia and carbonic acid, escape into the atmosphere, and are in measure lost to the crops.
"Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel"
Samuel William Johnson