Quote:
about the fungus...
is it like yeast...in that it remains dormant until the correct conditions present themselves and then they begin to multiply and thrive?
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Not being a microbiologist, I do not know for certain all of
the details of the mycorrhizae lifecycle, but I think we can
infer that would be true of anything where the product as
shipped are dry spores. Otherwise, mycorrhizae and bacterial
spores shipped in products like the dry Mycogrow preparations,
Actinovate, Rootshield, and so on would be completely
worthless. If that were the case, we probably would come
across a few naysayers when searching the WWW for these
products. (I wonder how long they remain viable in dry
storage. Probably varies with the organism.)
(We do find a few skeptics in academia, but not for reasons
having to do with dry spore or cultured organism viability.
They simply do not find credible the claims that introduced
fungi, beneficial bacteria, etc, will survive in competition with
native soil organisms in a particular area.)
It may be that moisture (and perhaps temperature) is the only
precondition needed to get them to become active. How long
they survive and the extent of subsequent spore production
may depend on other conditions that they find once they
become active. (Actinovate has a minimum temperature to
be effective, for example, and phosphate levels will effect
mycorrhizae reproduction in the root zone, plus mycorrhizae
need to come in contact with live roots.)
I was wondering about that with mycorrhizae the other day.
Will mycorrhizae survive the winter in my soil without live
roots? Do they leave spores behind that do not get eaten
by something else in the soil over the winter? Will the
mycorrhizal fungi survive if there is a winter cover crop
growing there to overwinter on the roots of? I usually end up
mowing the cover crop within a couple weeks of transplanting,
simply because that is when it flowers, so if mycorrhizal fungi
will inhabit the cover crop roots, it might still be alive by the
time I transplant the next year's veggies into the garden.
(Maybe I could even inoculate containers with a handful of soil
from a bed that had mycorrhizae the year before and a winter
cover crop.)
I know nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots of legumes survive
in the soil for awhile (or leave a sufficient load of spores behind
to inoculate a subsequent crop). A couple of sites that review
cover crops recommended inoculating seeds of alfalfa, clover,
vetch, etc, "in fields where a crop of the same kind of plant
has not already been growing recently," (meaning that if that
kind of plant was already grown in the field the previous year,
then new seeds do not need to be inoculated with spores of
nitrogen-fixing bacteria).
Some of these beneficial microorganisms die off in cold winter
weather. Maybe keeping them going in a container indoors
or in a greenhouse over the winter would be a way to have
a permanent culture of beneficial microorganisms that could
be used year after year. (Put a teaspoon of the cultured soil
in with seedlings when potting up, water with a diluted
molasses solution, and let nature take its course.)