The Helpful Gardener
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Ch. 19 Mycorrhizal Fungi

Talk about another chapter you all have heard me prattle on about; I find the symbiotic relations of fungi and plants to be the great oversight of modern agricutlre and horticulture despite being aware of their presence for a century...

Jeff shows detail by detail the role these unsung heroes play in the organic system, from nutrient release to rhizosphere generation and the part that caught my interest the most; glomalin. Seems this is a lynchpin of soil structure and fertility we have only identified and quantified since 1996! It was considered a contaminant until then! Shows how we have been making bad decisions based on bad information for a long time when it coomes to horticultural and agricultural practices... :roll:

I especially like Jeff's admonishment in the last section about fungicides and tilling. Y'all have heard me beat this drum for decades and it's nice to have back-up from such a knowledgeable source... 8)

HG

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rainbowgardener
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So I'm re-reading this chapter and again thinking, wow maybe this is something I've been totally missing out on in my lazy gardener way, that would really make my garden and seedlings better. I do start seeds in sterilized potting soil, no mycorrhizae. I've never "innoculated" anything.

Started looking into it... there are [url=https://www.kalyx.com/store/proddetail.cfm/ItemID/676269/CategoryID/12000/SubCatID/2560/file.htm]commercially available products[/url], some very expensive, some not so much:

$15 for 16 oz and it sounds like 16 oz would go pretty far. So maybe next year I will try it. Have to say, I was mildly put off by the way the stuff is advertised.... it's advertised like it was Miracle Grow.... not like hey this is something that will make your soil healthier and benefit your plants, but like buy our stuff and you will get super duper twice as big "amazing results" etc. Oh well.

Agree with Scott, that the big news in this chapter is that disturbing your soil at all messes up all the mycorrhizal networks, "so if you rototill stop."

I don't till, so maybe that's why my un-inoculated plants still do fine.

So do I need to add this stuff or don't I?

In the meantime... this is all I can concentrate on; it's 90 degrees inside my house... Do the last few chapters next time.

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The purchased stuff... I dunno, I have had some very good responses to some of those mixes, tranplants that were dicey coming through with flying colors, out of season digs that survived... I really do think there are some good products out ther and have had some great conversations with some leading experts that make me think this technology will continue to improvve and become more targeted plant by plant...

But in the end the plant chooses who it works with or not so we must be understanding as to which characters will work. Offering one type of mycorrhizae to ericaceous plants will work; another mix that might have great value to evergreen needled trees would be a collosal and expensive waste to those plants. And how often do we see mixes that tell us that?

If it says it works for everything, somebody is lying to you. CAn you do harm here? No, no way. You just have to make good decisions...

HG

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This chapter really demonstrated the fact that the plants know what they need better than we know what they need.

I found it interesting that not only do different plants prefer more or less fungi, but, in the case of micorrhizal fungi, different plants prefer different fungi. More so, they make their preferences known by their root exudates.

I've been waiting to hear the authors' opinion on soil cultivation and, sure enough, they are for as little of it as possible. I can't say I didn't see this coming, though, as all of the information on organic gardening indicates that the less you disturb the soil, the better. It almost follows, then that we shouldn't be walking around in our gardens, as this causes compaction (which is bad), which, in turn, often leads to tilling (which is bad). I wonder where this leaves shallow cultivation between rows.

It looks like, to be truly soil food web friendly, we should garden with beds that are narrow enough that we can plant, weed, and harvest, without walking in them. However, I wonder where this leaves the gardener that does not have a lot of yard space to utilize? After all, you can fit more plants in a large patch of garden rather than a grid-like arrangement of several beds.

I guess the simple answer is to enjoy healthier soil and crops in several beds or to have more crops with sup-excellent growth and soil in a big single-block of garden. I wonder how you would go about growing vining squash and melons in beds? Probably just use fewer plants and try to keep them all in the bed or let the trail out into the grass, I suppose :?:.

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If you mound rows, taking the soil from the aisle and piling it in the row, you gain surface area in the sides, adding back any lost space. I cover my rows with straw to maintain the mounded shape and mulch the soil. No lost space; I suspect it's about the same, and without the compaction, and with healthier soil...

HG

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Good idea, HG. I've heard you talk about raised-rows, before. Are you talking about gardening in beds when you talk about raised rows, or in one big block.

Also, as was discussed in another chapter, beds allow you to plant the plants much closer together than in a conventional garden. and still allow you to get healthy growth and a good harvest from them.

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About those bottled/bagged products -- I have serious skepticism about their shelf life. Do they come with expiration dates? If purchasing, probably best to get them from the source and NOT on sale. :roll:

I did notice last summer that my container plants (avocados, mango, citrus) for which I added to my usual home made mix about 1/4 to 1/3 Pro-mix Ultimate Organic potting mix and Gardeners Gold Organic potting mix -- both contain mycorrhizae -- exhibited multiple growth spurts and tripled in size in just one season. I bought the bagged soil mix in really good condition -- both kept/displayed indoors in the greenhouse. I doubt that I would get as good results if I bought them now -- assuming I could find any -- or if they had been piled out in the storage yard subject to rain (which can get in the bags through the vent perforations) and sun (solarizing them).

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Apps, I never thought about the storage conditions of bagged potting soil mix that contained microbes, but it makes sense. Since we are dealing with living organisms, they could probably be damaged by intense cooking in the sun or if the mixes were piled high on a skid, which would cause the lowest bags to become compacted, which we all know is terrible for fungi.

In order to get the freshest mix, it's probably best to buy it in early summer, when the stores are selling out and replenishing inventory.

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Check out you the tube video Emelia Hazlip synergistic gardening for mulched raised beds and no dig, combined with fungi and teeming bacteria it works a treat, if in a very dry area I guess raised paths and sunken mulched beds would also work.
We need to supply the right foods for fungi and achieve balance between
fungi and bacteria,
Elaine Ingham has recently been appointed chief scientist at the Rodale Institute

https://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/8902_0/organic-sustainable-practices/soil-foodweb-with-dr-elaine-ingham-webinar-oct2011

I also introduced the local fungi into my garden by taking just a small amount of uncultivated woodland soil and adding it to the mix when potting up seedlings. It is quite interesting to watch the various little fruiting bodies mushroom up with the lush plants in spring and autumn. Along with weeds cabbages and brassicas and mustards don't form a symbiotic relationship with fungi, other plants choose from different ones. It looks like our best anti biotics will come from fungi. Much to discover still under our feet.

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I very much appreciate what this book has done for organic gardening. It has definitely raised awareness. But even the authors admit that mycorrhizal fungus is a new subject to them. And if you look at the latest research, it paints a much more complex picture than bacterial vs. fungal. The most recent research has shown that at least some and probably many Brassica form relationships with Ectomycorrhizal fungus. Even grass forms relationships with Ectomycorrhizal fungus if allowed to grow to maturity before grazing or haying. "Roots Demystified" is a book that sites the only scientific study I have ever seen where deep tilling produced 30% higher yield than no-till. The authors are doing good work, but they need to do another revision and include the more recent research. They need to paint a much more complex and balanced picture.

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rainbowgardener
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One study doesn't make science. It makes an interesting idea to be tested more, especially when it flies in the face of a whole bunch of well established science.

Here's from a post I did last year:

"Just got back from hearing a terrific lecture by David Montgomery, author of Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations and had to share. I'm putting it here, because 1) the book might be good for the book club to take on and 2) it connects so well with what we are reading now.

Here's a few of his main points:

The erosion of soil due to plow based agriculture has lead to the demise of many civilizations from ancient Greece in the bronze age on. Plow-based agriculture erodes away 1.5 mm/yr of soil, no-till agriculture about half of that. Leaving native vegetation, about .01 mm/ yr of soil erodes away which nicely balances the .01 mm/yr rate of soil production. 1.5 mm/yr of erosion may not sound like much, but that means that the typical .5 -1 meter thick of original hillslope soil is totally destroyed in 500 - 1000 years, which not coincidentally is the life span of most major civilizations.

What to we need to do to prevent soil erosion from being the demise of our civilization:
*reduce subsidies for conventional erosive farming
*increase support for no-till practices
*promote practices that increase soil organic matter to sequester carbon and increase soil fertility.

He points out that 50% of the life of this planet exists below ground and the rest of us totally depend on that 50%.

By working on creating soil and soil fertility (by use of compost and biochar) we address the issues of climate change, public health, and feeding a hungry world! "

Tilling, whether deep or shallow tends to create hardpan at the boundary between tilled and not tilled, creating a bowl effect. It is better for the bowl to be bigger than smaller, so it makes sense that deep tilling is better than shallow tilling. But that doesn't mean it is better than no tilling.

But I'd be interested to see a citation of the original research you are talking about.

Artemesia
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The comparison of till vs no till in "Roots Demystified" is in chapter 7. It sites publications and advocates on both sides of the debate. I am not trying to say that deep till is always the answer. I use no-till, shallow till, and deep till. I rotate depending on effectiveness and appropriateness. Even Rodale has only been able to use no-till once every 3 years without affecting yield, which is about how often I can use it too. I do not think my Troy 10 HP rototiller is going to cause hardpan. I garden in beds so I do not create compaction from walking. Rodale avoids erosion by not plowing inclined fields and always planting cover crops. Historically, most erosion could have been avoided this way. If someone insists on row crops on inclined land or loose soils that blow away easily, then I agree, it should always be no-till. But permanent no-till is difficult without some herbicide use which I do not promote. Those lands should be left as pasture. The point I was trying to make is that "Teaming With Microbes" tends to paint a simple picture of bacterial vs fungal plants with no-till as the silver bullet. But there is plenty of research showing the plants he sites as being non-mycorrhizal, as having mycorrhizal relationships. The real debate should be bacterial, vs Ectomycorrizal, vs VAM, vs no-till, vs shallow till, vs deep till, vs the unknown. Optimizing yields in our gardens and farms requires a more complex set of tools than just no-till.



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