[gardeners] Re: Mycorrhiza questions...

Thomas Giannou (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 18 Oct 1998 12:23:49 -0700 

Margaret,

I can't go into the details here without violating the message area rules,
so I'll e-mail you about more details.

I originally got Mycorrhiza inoculant from a close friend of mine.  I
mentioned to him I had to dig up all my raspberry plants and move them into
rows that were farther apart.

He gave me a little bag of inoculant about the size of two cigars in a
plastic bag and said to me, "that ought to do ya for your Raspberries."  His
instructions were, "you only need to put a little bit on."  I didn't have a
clue at the time what that stuff was and I didn't think to ask, "How much is
a little bit."  It just didn't feel right to me.  I had over 300 plants and
how was I supposed to apply that little bag to each plant???  I felt like
there needed to be more volume or something added, so I mixed it in with
peat moss and applied about a trowel full to the bottom of each hole and set
the plant on top.  Well, the result turned into raspberry plants that are
nine feet tall and are still growing.  The leaves are about palm size.  The
bugs don't bother them.  And the weeds don't like the mycorrhiza in the
soil.  The roots on these plants are considerable.  These are all next years
canes, so the fruit ought to work out okay there as well.  When they go
dormant in the late fall (after five nights of frost they are still mostly
green),  I'll cut them down to about 5 feet in height.

As for applying mycorrhiza, you can prepare your garden as you normally do
if you like, with a few exceptions.  If you are planting tomato's, for
example, dig the hole for the plant, sprinkle 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of inoculant
in the hole.  Set the plant on top of it so the roots come in contact with
the inoculant and fill in the dirt.  Water as you normally would.
In about four to five weeks put down Biosol fertilizer at a rate of 3/4 cup
per square yard.  That's it for fertilizer for the year.  The best growing
environment is soil that contains organic material and is well drained.  The
soil can actually be fairly poor soil.

When you till, try not to disturb the soil within a foot of your plant.
Water normally and if you are growing tomato plants, stay away from those
wire cage supports.  They will collapse under the weight of what will be
there as your tomato plant matures.  We switched over to using metal fence
posts as supports that the plants can be tied up to...
using wire or whatever suits you.

We are getting heavy frosts now and you have to cover the tomato plants.  In
the morning, take the cover off and the plants do quite well.  What I have
noticed is these plants seem to be prolific.  They have been producing
tomatos since the middle of July and new ones soon replace the ripe ones ...
to end the season with gobs of tomatos in various stages of ripening.  The
neighbors have 5 tomato plants that literally have filled their garden area
this year.  A single pear tomato plant is six feet high ten feet in width
and 3 feet thick and has lots of pear tomato's on it from being ripe to
green.

Even though the bees are dormant now, the Quinault strawberry plants are
still flowering and producing nice sized strawberries.  They are everbearing
and are supposed to stop in June,  the neighbors have been picking their
berries twice a week all summer long.  Those things are really sweet...
yummmy!   Even unrooted runners are producing berries and runners off
runners are producing berries.  This year has been fun working with
Mycorrhiza Inoculant in our gardens.  I am looking forward to next year to
see what my Raspberries are going to do.  I used to hate gardening, but this
stuff has made it fun and exciting.

I'll get to more info in private e-mail.

Best Regards,
Thomas Giannou
-----Original Message-----
From: Margaret Lauterbach <mlaute@micron.net>
To: gardeners@globalgarden.com <gardeners@globalgarden.com>
Date: Sunday, October 18, 1998 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: [gardeners] Re: weeds....


>At 07:59 PM 10/17/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>Hi all,
>>
>>This year, being re-tired and all, starting a little home business, and
>>spending a fair amount of time in the garden, I can honestly say I have
>>really enjoyed gardening for a change.  When you work full time, there
just
>>isn't all that much time for gardening.  I put mycorrhiza inoculant on my
>>Raspberries in a rather goofy manner that worked despite my way of doing
>>things and I noticed that many weeds were no longer growing in my
>>Raspberries, Strawberries or among the tomato plants.  Dandelions, the one
>>weed I have been at war with, just didn't show up this year.  I searched
>>around on the internet and found that some weeds do not like to grow where
>>mycorrhiza fungi are plentiful.
>>
>>We used to spend an hour or two twice a week trying to keep the dandelions
>>out of our garden.  There just wasn't any there this year.  The same story
>>was true for our lawn.  For a while, I was thinking, maybe the weather had
>>something to do with it.  I live in a zone 5 area.  Has anyone else
noticed
>>that dandelions seemed scarce this year?
>>
>>Best Regards,
>>Thomas Giannou
>>
>Thomas, you're very enthusiastic about the microrhiza fungi.  Where did you
>get it?  How do you apply it?  Is it specific for different crops?  Thanks,
>Margaret
>