Trichoderma Harzianum & Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizas

[Illegal smile]

Nice, well thought out and presented comment uBercaMeL. kudos

I have a smattering of knowledge about Mycorrhizae and such, so I think that I might be able to carry on a rather decent conversation with you re: beneficial bacteria/fungi. But at the end of the day, I have the soul of a clown

As I understand it, there are 3 types of mycorrhizae, endo, ecto and ericoid. Our favorite plant, mj, seems to best get along equally well with endo and ecto, in my experience. I first used mycorrhizae in 2001 and it has become a trusted friend.

I totally concur that it is not easy to find a mycorrhizal product that is only mycorr but they are out there. Also, unless and until there is a proper study done on the effects, if any, there will be long debates on the efficacy of the fungi.

Yes, I have had my best grows utilizing mycorr, but then again, I don't throw out my soil after a grow, but rather, I just add fresh soil (let's just call it that). My feeling is that I spend so much time, energy and effort to create a soil which is thriving with, can I use the word, micro-herd, why would I want to chuck it out and start all over again? I don't use synthetic or man made ferts, so my soil is not contaminated with salts and heavy metals.

puff, puff, pass

Edited June 16, 2011 by Illegal smile

[mamba]

given the price of this stuff we should all just be buying once and making mychorrhizal substrate cakes like we do with shrooms (verm and brown rice flower in sterile jar). i know you can store spore syringes and prints for up to 4 years in a cold dry place so it's really just one of those 'do it once every couple of years' jobs.

i might invest and just add a few chunks of colonised substrate to my soil mix each time...

glad I saw this thread, tyty

[uBercaMeL]

VAM require roots to grow so you'd have to innoculate the root-systems of bait-plants then collect the spores after the plant is finished, but really you'd to need to have your stuff tested to be sure of success, which will cost you far more than just buying a packet innoculant...

You can culture Trichoderma fairly easily I think, though be careful if you have a greenhouse, and you'd still need to get it analysed to check it was succesful and ensure that you hadn't cultured something grim.

I reckon the best bet for saving money would be to partialy re-use previously innoculated & healthy composts at the end of each grow like illegal smile says, & only pick/sift out the larger bits of root leaving lots of small fragments and hyphae in the medium (both of which are more infectious than spores) to pass the innoculations on. I would still use packet stuff aswell though, just at a lower dose perhaps.. I've read a few studies suggest that using a fraction of actual soil in with your compost significantly increases innoculation , so maybe if you add a little of your local woodland (I think the ideal was 1/9 or 1/10) in with your reused stuff (maybe try the same fraction) you might save a few bucks and maybe even get better results too.

Edited November 21, 2011 by uBercaMeL

[uBercaMeL]

On further reading it seems there are some newer techniques for in vitro culture but it wouldn't be economically viable let alone do-able at home /without access to good lab equipment and dyes, etc. Try a few normally innoculated clones against some control ones, if they are better then reuse some of the soil with some new compost and test against a control & more normally innoculated clones, and if you have the room; reused + innoculated at various fractions/strengths too...

It might be that the colonisation gets stronger over generations of re-use/re-colonisation (would make sense as only the inhabitants most suited to the medium would thrive, surely?) and so less and less innoculant need be added (to a point) to maintain a given level of beneficial innoculation... Get meh?

Edited November 21, 2011 by uBercaMeL

[Felix Dzerzhinsky]

VAM require roots to grow so you'd have to innoculate the root-systems of bait-plants then collect the spores after the plant is finished, but really you'd to need to have your stuff tested to be sure of success, which will cost you far more than just buying a packet innoculant...

You can culture Trichoderma fairly easily I think, though be careful if you have a greenhouse, and you'd still need to get it analysed to check it was succesful and ensure that you hadn't cultured something grim.

It is fairly easy to culture and you can order all the necessary items online, I tried it here but as you point out some sort of testing would need to be done on a regular basis and the conditions I tried it under were hardly ideal.

I reckon the best bet for saving money would be to partialy re-use previously innoculated & healthy composts at the end of each grow like illegal smile says, & only pick/sift out the larger bits of root leaving lots of small fragments and hyphae in the medium (both of which are more infectious than spores) to pass the innoculations on. I would still use packet stuff aswell though, just at a lower dose perhaps.. I've read a few studies suggest that using a fraction of actual soil in with your compost significantly increases innoculation , so maybe if you add a little of your local woodland (I think the ideal was 1/9 or 1/10) in with your reused stuff (maybe try the same fraction) you might save a few bucks and maybe even get better results too.

If you are growing with organic nutrients then re-using compost is definitely a good idea and will re-introduce beneficial bacteria as well as some of the fungi and adding loam will also help to simulate natural soil conditions far better than just using a peat based compost which is not a natural growing medium for beneficial microbes. You can buy sterilised top soil from B&Q and probably Homebase so no need to raid your local woodland, I certainly had good results mixing loam in when making up my own potting compost

[Illegal smile]

In days gone bye, farmers would bring gifts of their soil to new farmers as a way of blessing the fields. We know that this, in fact, was a form of soil inoculation.

I've been recycling my soil for some years now with no adverse effects. Of course I have to replenish Ca & Mg, but that's to be expected.

Overall, imho, to grow without the benefit of bacteria and fungi is akin to driving a car without the benefit of power steering and such. It's doable, but harder.

puff, puff, pass

[LooseLips]

Hey all.

I've read through many of the pages in this thread, very interesting read but a bit too much for me. I'm after an easy to use product(s) off the shelf ready to go sort of thing. I currently use Vitalink Bio-pac and Bioplus and find them to be quite good but after a bit of reading it seems possible that over a short period of time the bottle contents could die off, although Vitalink deny this. Something to do with peach stones instead of seaweed extract and added micronised zeolites and mollasses. Do you think that sounds right? And would you recommend I change to another product?

Thanks LL

[uBercaMeL]

Yo loose, fairly sure that all organic stimulants and nutrients will go off eventually. Give it a sniff, if it smells ok (not putrid or pooey) it'll probably be fine. I've used loads of old organic nutes & stims with very little troubles (maybe a few more micro-deficiencies), though when seaweed extracts (which at least one of those vita-link products is, I'm sure) go bad, it does seems to make plants do funny things! I was using a 7+ year old bottle of biocanna until recently, seemed to work fine.

Just popped in to post this article by Linda Chalker Scott of garden web & professor at washington state. It's a good read for skeptics, like most of her stuff, and makes a good concise summary of most of what has been said in this thread to date regarding mycorrhizae:

Mycorrhizae - So, what the heck are they, anyway?

& more of her 'myth' articles here:

*edit for spelling

Edited April 5, 2012 by uBercaMeL

[Felix Dzerzhinsky]

Just taken delivery of a shed load of neem cake and was wondering does anyone have any idea whether neem cake has a positive, negative or neutral effect on VAM ? There seems to be some conflicting research on the internet.

[Illegal smile]

Just taken delivery of a shed load of neem cake and was wondering does anyone have any idea whether neem cake has a positive, negative or neutral effect on VAM ? There seems to be some conflicting research on the internet.

I use VAM and have on occasion neem cake & oil. Never noticed anything negative, both seemed to play nicely together.

[Cambium]

It would be surprising if there are any detrimental effects. A cursory glance at some search results shows a fair bit of research on the Neem tree Azadirachta indica and how it is classed as a highly mycorrhizal‐dependent (VAM) species. If there were any ill effects then I doubt that healthy populations would be sustained due to leaf and seed drop. Hope all is well mate.

[Felix Dzerzhinsky]

I use VAM and have on occasion neem cake & oil. Never noticed anything negative, both seemed to play nicely together.

It would be surprising if there are any detrimental effects. A cursory glance at some search results shows a fair bit of research on the Neem tree Azadirachta indica and how it is classed as a highly mycorrhizal‐dependent (VAM) species. If there were any ill effects then I doubt that healthy populations would be sustained due to leaf and seed drop.

Thanks chaps, wasn't sure if neem's anti microbial action would suppress VAM's or not. I know neem cake suppresses nitrifying bacteria which slows the rate of nitrogen loss from fertilisers but couldn't find anything to say whether it did the same for arbuscular mycorrhizas.

Hope all is well mate.

Going great thanks man, busy planting and harvesting most days now. The cicadas have started up now so our forest is a wall of sound and you can still hear the frogs down in the rice fields below the house, a much nicer sound than the wail of police sirens or ever present noise from the police helicopter hovering overhead

[dingo bingo]

Evenin' everyone,

I've found half a bottle of Canna's Trichoderma powder that I bought 4 or 5 years ago, is it still any good? I was thinking of perhaps adding it to my new tub of PM Essence?

Apologies if it's already been asked but I couldn't find any info after a search.

Cheers, DB!

[Felix Dzerzhinsky]

Not sure if the spores will still be viable or not but Essence contains T. Harzianum spores anyway.

[dingo bingo]

Cheers Felix!

If the spores aren't viable will they do any harm? Is it worth sticking them in 'just in case', safe in the kownledge that they're harmless?