..........Mycorrhiza is fungi spore that is hosted by specific plants. The plant hosts the mycorrhiza. The spore begins life anew by becoming a vast network of living fungi whos special purpose in life is to seek and find "ALL" of the elements the roots can use including food, minerals and water. Micorrhiza delivers this to the roots that extract it from the Micorrhiza, and then expell it to a specialized bacterial zone near the roots created and maintained, by the roots. All the plant food no matter how it is delivered to the plant or created by the plant goes through this process. We now know that foliar feed elements travel from the leaf to the roots of the plant at the rate of about one foot per hour.
The speed of useable food returned, to the parts, of the plant including the fruit moves at the same speed, of about one foot per hour.
The major elements that harm this relationship between plant roots and Mycorrhiza are the poison salts of man made fertilizer, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides. These are all biocides that harm or kill the very living biology we work, to build into a stronger community, of biological factors, in our soils. Micorrihiza and plant hosts are as old as time itself. You can bring your healthy patch back faster and stonger, by using Micorrihiza.
I have used Micorrhiza for the past fifteen or so years. My favorite site and product source is:
http://www.bio-organics.com/ There are of course lots, of educational data entries, on this site.
The most interesting to me is the archive holding all of the biologist site owner's monthy newsletters. Learn about Micorrihiza here and immediately upon use have a better garden.
SHARE YOUR MYCORRHIZA EXPERIENCES
Never tried it. Read about it years ago and planned to, but never got around to it. Have you done side by side tests? Does it really help that much? Specifically how? Better flower/fruit? Disease resistance? Growth rate?
I'm unfamiliar with it but I do encourage and have inoculated pines growing in pots mycelium fungus for much the same purpose. I have found them to occur naturally with pines that have been in bonsai pots for several years. ☺
Victor............all your answers can be found on the site I gave the link to.
doc-Not sure if it's the same or not, but it sounds similiar. I use ProMix BX for all of my containers. It has Endomycorrhiza in the mix itself. Not totally sure if it makes the annuals better, but, since using this product in my containers, I do not need to fertilize as often, water as often, and the plants do seem to take off better than if I planted them in a general all purpose planting medium (Scotts, Peters, or Miracle Gro mixes.) I was unfamiliar with the product being sold individually. The raised beds that I do have, I did add a cube of ProMix BX to the soil that was there, along with greensand. I will definitely have to check out that link!
Thanks a bunch!
Hemhostaholilc............you seem to be into the arena of using fungi. I do not know your product by the image name. You are going to enjoy the site. Stick with it a bit to get the basic handle. You will see how you can make your results even better. The product is not yet sold for individual plants. There are two common types each of which contain thousands of different fungi spore. Ecto Types for general landscaping trees and shrubs and Endo Types for general gardening use. Within each "type" we only know a few spore by name. We mostly do know what the results will be by offering the types and working with their need to be free from man made posions most specifically harsh posion insecticides, fungicides, miticides and herbicides. When we work with nature the way it was originally in creation or evolution we enable the soil to heal itself. The benefits follow with no fan fare and keep getting better.
Farmers have been doing this for their legumes.....beans, peas, alfalfa since about 1940 or even earlier. Of course our vast mountains have been living with many fungi and host relationships since time began.
I believe there was a DG article about this a while back and she gave sources and product names.
I have given one excellent source of sound basic Mycorrhiza informaton, source of clearly and easy to understand product and of course they have names. Just click on the link within my original post.
What is happening comercially is trick use of using new image names for the same identical packaging while using fillers to reduce spore counts by weight or volume to make one think he has found a bargain. Cost is normally relative to quality honest spore counts. There are no new spores just man playing commercial games to mess up your brains.
Thanks for the info and the site. Was there for a bit reading and absorbing. I wish they made human grade spores that would allow me to feel better in the gloom of winter...lol. I might have to invest in a bit for the 2 raised beds I will be creating this year. Anything that doesn't alter the pH of the soil, will assist symbiotically with the plants and help them obtain necessary nutrients, and does not have any negative impact on the environment is all good in my book!
Thanks again.