@AndyK I used them a lot, about 10 years ago. Nowadays, I sometimes use them but mostly on cuttings/seedlings that were done in a sterile medium in a frame or as a juju when repotting outside the official window.
It has been my experience so far that pots requiring ectomycorrhizae get colonized no matter what I do. It may be caused by my specific garden environment, half of my current garden is kept as a forest environment and left wild… so the rest of the garden is as close to a clearing in a forest as you can get in an agglomeration. My previous garden was at the edge of a real forest so the plants would get exposed to spores of both types all the time.
There have been scientific studies that show adding mycorrhizae to the soil can help some species, for example, this one on Oregon White Oak:
You will notice in the study that they were specifically studying Oaks grown from Acorns and their inoculate was simply some native soil.
It probably doesn’t apply to collected material which should always have some native soil included when collected. If you bareroot your tree’s or grow from seed, just throw a few handfuls of native soil into the mix and you are probably good.
Possibly one of the biggest benefit to the soil of endomycorrhizae and compost tea would be an increase in glomalin and glomalin-related soil proteins. They bind iron while also increasing carbon and nitrogen storage in the rhizosphere. There is a strong correlation between the glomalin/GRSP concentration and the ecosystem productivity. The concentration is higher in established forests, lower in agricultural fields and the lowest in grasslands.
I say possibly because while I know it is working with the compost itself as a soil amendment or mulch in open soil (no till/no dig), I don’t know if that transposes to the percolated juice. I may need to run some experiments next spring.
Fermented nettle tea is another good juice/tea for soil organisms, I’ve used it consistently in the garden for the past 3 years and I’m very happy with it. Next spring I’ll start experimenting with rhubarb leaf fermented tea (insect repellent), comfrey fermented tea (parasite repellent and fertilizer) and horsetail fermented tea.
Hi @Michael_P
I was looking at collecting nettle seeds yesterday to get a patch going.
I made comfrey tea this year for the first time- my advice would be to keep a lid on it to keep the bugs out and the smell in.
I have head it said by old gardeners (folk law) that rhubarb leaves benefit from urine to break them down, although this sounds like an excuse to pee on the compost heap!
treat the nettle patch like a bamboo patch, fence it in with a root proof membrane or place it in a large container. As an alternative to seeds, you can get a rhizome (if lucky) or a stolon by carefully tugging at the plant from the base of the stem. Transplant that reasonably quickly and it will start colonizing the area where you put it, saving you a year or two in establishing the patch. If you were closer (I think you’re in Blighty), I’d give you a rhizome with a couple of attached stems… I have more nettles than I could ever use in my wildest dream.
Nettle tea will have the same issue of smell… place it as far from your kitchen and your neighbours as possible. Ideally, use a cheap lidded bucket to brew it, stir it daily until it stops bubbling then throw the solids on your compost heap.
For most compost and teas, you can also assist the breaking down of plant material with a lawn mower… shredded stuff composts faster. I keep trying to speed up composting because my garden produces so much… I currently have in the region of 5m3 of compost finishing, and I have probably more waiting to be processed. That’s all material cut down between June and now.
The wee on the heap is actually a good sustainable design to treat human waste
The inoculation was required in the experiment because the industry standard for propagation is the use of a sterile substrate. In a natural environment, the seedling would get inoculated when the radicle emerges from the acorn.
In the experiment, the seedlings were sprouted in moist vermiculite then transplanted in a 2:1:1 mix of peat:coarse perlite:vermiculite. If the peat has been sterilized or had no contact with growing plants for >2 years, there are simply no viable mycorrhizae spores left to inoculate the seedling and you’d either have to manually inoculate or place the plant where inoculation is highly likely to happen. As the seedlings were grown indoors, there was a very low potential exposure to spores.
For your bare-rooting question we’re going to split my mycorrhizae family:
For endomycorrhizae, bare rooting would not be an issue as the mycorrhizae resides inside the root tissue. You may need to re-inoculate if you remove most of the root ball or all the actively growing roots. As above, this may be accomplished either by hand introducing appropriate spores or placing in a situation where exposure to spores is expected.
For ectomycorrhizae, bare rooting and root ball washing would wipe the mycellar network but not fully remove the ectomycorrhizae. Except if you’re washing with a bactericide soap or a fungicide (or pressure washing)… plain water is just not enough to remove bacteria and fungi. This will obviously still negatively impact the plant as the network it relied on needs to be rebuilt… and the plant didn’t originally expand its root system to cope on its own, due to the relationship.
Okay this makes a lot of sense now. I can only hope our identification of mycorrhizal fungi improves. I’ve heard even using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction can be difficult). I heard on a podcast that fungi can even be multi-nucleate hence adding more confusion.
Great question. I have been an organic gardener for many years and have been using many of the techniques discussed on Asymmetry on this topic. You might check out this site for some good info on the topic as well. https://www.boogiebrew.net/. My organic gardening mentor introduced me to this company as well as the Organic Solutions worm castings that are among their products. Although I now make my own worm castings, extractions and teas, I supplement with their products. You can make a compost extraction from worm castings and I think a more dilute version of their Boogie Brew tea would be great as well on our trees.
This spring, I’ve gone 3/4 of the way on all the trees I have:
-mycorrhizae
-humic acid
-fish/kelp hydrolysate
My take so far…
One shouldn’t spray fish/kelp hydrolysate using a backpack sprayer with a wand that has a hairline crack and one should be fully aware of the wind direction when spraying. I smell like the aftermath of a fish market on a hot summer day.
Due to the lockdown, I’m a few parts short for the compost brewer… I have the tank, I have the pump, I have the compost, I’m just missing the pipes and connectors. I may jury-rig something with an old compressor line in the meantime.
The fish hydrolysate I have is thick. It makes the dilution a rich brown colour. I have to use watering can for it as it would clog up the fine membrane of my watering lance and I can imagine it clogging up a backpack sprayer too. @Michael_P is you humic acid a dilutable solution or a topdressing?
Mine is quite thick too but sprays without any issue with the backpack sprayer. I’m starting to understand why you should be careful not to get any on your skin. I’ll also need to be more careful when applying it next time as it drove my oldest pug crazy last night.
I bought the liquid humic acid from GS Plant Foods as it was dirt cheap on Amazon (literally below shipping price)… I ended up buying the fish/kelp hydrolysate from GS as well. I still have most of a bag of Fulhumin if I decide to apply solid again.
Thanks @Michael_P. I will try to get hold of some of that. While using the powder/granular humic acid I had last year I though a liquid humic acid might be easier to apply (at the same time with other ferts and additives).
I’ll give the sprayer a go then. I’ve not tried, it was just my assumption because it clogged up my lance rosette, but it does have extremely fine holes. Hope you can glue/seal the hairline crack in your sprayer wand.
I’ve ordered a few replacement handles to be on the safe side. I’ve received one today that is way better (metal) but I’ll need adapters to connect it.
If I recall correctly, the spraying dilution is lighter than the soil dilution, which will also help a lot.
Mix it up in a bucket, let settle, and use a fine tea strainer / sieve to filter into spray bottle…Quite often, the problen is the fungal myceilum growing th the mix. Never leave unused spray set in the spray bottle…
Yes, for one it doesn’t keep long when diluted but there’s also the clogging… I’d actually recommend running some clean water through after spraying any mix, in order to clean up the line all the way to the nozzle.
Yup…
I’m personally drawn by the mushroom smell. I guess, to disperse the spores…
AND, repelled by the fecal coliform smell of fresh do-do, for obvious reasons…
Hi, just want to drop Dr Elaine’s website in here so that anyone who wants to learn more about what was discussed has the resource to hand. will drop this in the resource category as its own post. www.soilfoodweb.com
