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Would it be logical to say that if you inoculate your seedlings before planting out, that they will carry the beneficial organisms to your growing area and will continue to spread?
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While I do not know for sure how dependent the bacterial strain
in Actinovate is on exudates from living plant tissue, the real
answer is probably that it depends on how much competition
it has from other organisms in the soil. That is likely true of all
biocontrol products intended to inoculate soil or container mix.
It may also perform differently in a container mix than it does
in any of the widely varying environments of garden soils (each
with its own local collection of native organisms, nutrients, soil
structure, etc).
The only thing sure here in this thread is that it finds Ray's and
Ami's container mixes and plant foliage a congenial
environment in which to reproduce.
(Natural Industries has documentation on several different
experimental test environments where Actinovate performed
well, based on "with and without" tests of various plants, but
those results do not necessarily carry over to *any* garden soil
or container mix. One really has to try it in one's own garden
or containers to see how it performs in competition with the
local microfauna in one's own growing environment. It clearly
had positive results for some people, though, so that is reason
for optimism when using it.)