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Old May 27, 2009   #15
dice
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: PNW
Posts: 4,743
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I do not know whether bone meal would bother mycorrhizae
or not. It does have quite a bit of phosphorus, but like you say
it is slow release (cited as having a 90-day breakdown time in
soil in various references). I just do not know whether it will
eventually build up to a level where the mycorrhizae will be
inhibited. Certainly it is not going to bother them for the first
two months at least. Maybe by then the plants are already big
enough that any negative effects from the phosphorus in the
bone meal on the mycorrhizae are not noticeable.

You would have to try it with and without, ie one plant with
mycorrhizae and bone meal and another with no mycorrhizae
and bone meal and see if you notice a difference (both plants
should be the same cultivar, something that tends to produce
very consistent results from one plant to another and one
season to another; some reliable, mostly bulletproof canner
like Rutgers or Campbells 1327 would be a good choice for
a test subject, and you might want to do 2-4 each way
instead of just one).

Another issue is that phosphorus tends to stay put in the soil
once it becomes available. There is very little migration of
phosphorus from one part of the soil to another. So even if
it built up around particles of bone meal to the point where
the mycorrhizae on the roots are effected, the effect would
be localized, not general. You would have these little islands
in the soil, like stars in outer space, where there is little or
no mycorrhizae, while most of the root ball, the roots in
between particles of bone meal, would still have a healthy
mycorrhizal population.
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