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Old December 4, 2014   #22
Redbaron
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Oklahoma
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vicmeister View Post
You know what completely TANKED last year??? CARROTS. Carrots did NOT like the soil at all. Luckily I'm allergic to carrots so I only planted them to help out the tomatoes, which I'll do again this year but they are not happy critters.
I am glad this thread got bumped. I forget where, sorry, but I do remember reading somewhere that carrots are obligate mycorrhizal hosts. That means it is possible they are a clue as to what happened in your soil. Possibly too much nutrient load "burned" and killed off the mycorrhizal fungi, which possibly caused a cascading radical shift in the soil biosphere. The change in the microbiology as the base for the entire soil food web could be the reason for the mass slaughter of worms, as they are near the top of that particular food chain. So the carrots not doing well, if it was because the Mycorrhizal fungi in the soil died off, could be a clue. It's a bit late to test this hypothesis, however, one thing you could do next year is inoculate with this:

Mycogrow

Probably only need to do that one year though.
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"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labour; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system."
Bill Mollison
co-founder of permaculture
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