Inoculating bulbs?
Nhu Nguyen (Sat, 06 Feb 2016 20:55:12 PST)
This is a bit of a late response, but I thought I'd chime in since my
research is all about mycorrhizae and the rhizosphere. A lot of what has
been said here is correct, but some of it lies in the realm of speculation.
It is important to note that symbioses with mycorrhizae are not permanent
and depends on environmental conditions. One of such conditions is the
availability of two essential nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorous. Plants
are often limited by these two nutrients, and by associating with fungi or
bacteria, they are able to more efficiently gather these nutrients in the
soil. To get these nutrients, plants will need to trade photosynthetic
carbon for them. When these nutrients are available in excess, such as in
fertilization, there is no longer a need for plants to continue the
expensive trading partnership and the symbiosis thus dissolves.
What this means is that choose either or. If you're going to fertilize,
don't bother with mycorrhizae. If you're adding mycorrhizae, you don't need
to fertilize as often. But eventually your nutrients in the pot will run
out and mycorrhizae will no longer be of any help.
Pathogenic fungi and bacteria are even more important to consider when
growing plants. That's why we have spent so much money developing chemicals
to kill them. As mentioned before, knocking down pathogen load is more
important than sterilization. It is becoming more clear that a ratio
between good and bad soil microbes will determine success when growing
plants. This is an on-going field of research which we may see more useful
results in the near future.
Nhu
On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 12:37 PM, penstemon <penstemon@q.com> wrote:
Good information about the phosphorus, thanks! I'll add that soil
biodiversity is better with a pH of 7 or higher, as that is what it takes
for bacteria to flourish. Bacteria are at the base of the food web, eaten
by nearly every other soil-dwelling microorganism, so they are kind of
important.
Sure. Someone told me that adding mycorrhizae to garden soil can’t hurt,
though for some plants the addition might have no effect, or it could be
the wrong kind (ecto-, arbuscular, or arbutoid), or the wrong species in
the case of a plant which is colonized by only one species, or the
mycorrhizae could be dead on arrival.
There seems to be some evidence that species dependent of ectomycorrhizae
can survive under, say, manzanitas (arbutoid), but whether or not
calochortus, which I assume are associated with arbuscular mycrorrhizae
(the most common type) would survive in a similar situation is another
story. (There’s a short paper on this subject you can download if you
Google “manzanita mycorrhizae” and then “Download Emily’s synopsis...”)
Bob Nold
Denver, Colorado, USA
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