MYCORRHIZAE
Mycorrhizae
Q&A
Q:
A:
IF I USE MYCORRHIZAE
WHEN I START SEEDS,
DO I HAVE TO USE IT WITH
EVERY TRANSPLANT?
MATT SAYS: The short answer is, once
a plant is inoculated with mycorrhizal
fungi you do not need to keep
applying the mycorrhizal products.
The catch that you may run into is that
inoculating from seed is tricky. The key
is the placement of the mycorrhizal
product. I would suggest applying
a layer of the product well below
where the seed is planted so that as
the roots emerge from the seed, they
must travel through the mycorrhizal
product layer. Only by doing this
can you ensure a higher chance of
inoculation. An option you may want to
try is germinating the seed, and then
prior to the first transplant into a larger
container, use the mycorrhizal product
to dust the roots. This is a highly
effective way to inoculate the plant.
As I stated above, once you’ve done
this, you do not need to re-apply the
mycorrhizal product.
– Matt Linderman, Santiam Organics
President & CEO
A:
ANDREW SAYS: I’d say once upon
transplanting, and good to apply once
every two weeks after that. This ensures that the proper species dominate
the microflora of the root zone. If your
microbial product contains nitrogenfixing bacteria, discontinue the applications in the second half of flowering.
– Andrew Schell, House & Garden
Nutrients International
Sales Manager
108
Maximum Yield USA | December 2016
Nutrient salts
and natural
fungi in soil
don’t mix."
Many growers who cultivate indoors
use nutrient or mineral salts to fertilize their plants. There is nothing
wrong with that. You will get good,
standard results growing this way.
However, nutrient salts and natural
fungi in soil don’t mix. Now, if you are
growing great plants and don’t see a
need to change, you should know a
few things. Nutrient salts will always
result in a lower nutrient, bio-availability, about 25 per cent, than other
cultivation methods. Bio-availability
refers to the amounts of nutrients that
are in a state readily available for
absorption. The use of nutrient salts
and mycorrhizae are, unfortunately,
mutually exclusive. Many of the saltbased nutrients today will kill or
disrupt the function of mycorrhizae.
In order to foster a mycorrhizal association in your soil, you will want to
use organic or, better yet, veganic
cultivation techniques to get best
results while simultaneously shifting
to a more natural style of growing. We
should all be familiar with the basic
concepts of organic cultivation. In this
day and age when we are discovering
the damage that pesticides can do to
the environment and delicate ecosystems, we should all be looking to make
the switch. When you are cultivating
organically, you are using nutrients
based on naturally sourced things like
seaweed and animal manure. Organic
nutrients tend to come from renewable
resources and are environmentally
friendly. The one thing they fail to do is
naturally provide sufficient quantities
of the mycorrhizae you need. This is not
really a big deal as you can purchase
mycorrhizae for supplementation.