I did an experiment with Mycogrow.
I noticed that all of the best old gardeners in our Home ORchard Society cared about the amount of fungal material in teh soil.
They talked about the tilth of the soil, whether it had fungi in it, how well it drained, and how much
microbiology it had in it. As I’ve been learning about different kinds of fungi, one kind that has been a bit mysterious to me has been mycorrhizal fungi. Most of the mushrooms that people pick while out on forays are mycorrhizal fungi, as they grow in symbiosis with the roots of the trees they are partnering with. In recent years, I’ve become interested in mushrooms as well as growing
fruit. In the last few years, I’ve been hearing about people trying to urge us to add mycorrhizal spores to our plants when we plant them. Most of these people are planting annual vegetables and flowers. They often show the difference between how much more the plant grows with mycorrhizal partners than without. That makes sense, as we know the mushrooms we gather help the trees in the forest and vice versa. However, most of my garden is already planted in fruit trees and berry bushes. What can I do to add mycorrhizal fungi to an orchard or to already planted trees to help them grow better?
A lot of promising research has been done in this area by the Rodale Institute of organic gardening fame in Pennsylvania. This is where the soil scientist Elaine
Ingham now works. A researcher there named David Douds set up a protocol to increase the amount of mycorrhizal fungi so you can spread it on your farm. Well, I’m not a farmer, so let’s see if we can adapt that to a garden. There’s also a series of youtube videos that have been set up on the topic. Search for “growing mycorrhizal fungi” on youtube.
Douds planted the seeds of grasses to try to build the mycorrhizal mass. He chose grasses because they are very efficient in growing a wide variety of mycorrhizal fungi. Many of our mushrooms only grow with one species or a few, so they’re not so good for growing the mycorrhizal fungi. He selected bahia grass, a tropical grass that would grow the fungi and then die off during the winter, leaving him with a bulk of mycorrhizae that he can plant or distribute throughout the farm. I don’t want to produce a huge amount of mycorrhizae out of the ground. I want it evenly distributed in my
yard with the plants so they will be able to withstand droughts, disease and other challenges. In addition, bahia grass costs about $50 to have it shipped to your house. Wheat seed is really cheap and locally available, even at your grocery store. You only have to buy as much as you want, and enough might cost you 48 cents.
I decided to use wheat as the “substrate” to grow the mycorrhizae on. It won’t necessarily die in the winter here, but that can be an advantage. The mycorrhizal spores will die if they don’t find living roots within 48 hours, so I want it to stay alive long enough to intertwine with the roots of the trees and bushes and continue the life of the mycorrhizae. I want the mycorrizae to live on the roots of my trees and bushes. In nature, squirrels and other rodents find the sclerota (fruit of the
underground mushroom), eat part and plant the rest for later, increasing the places where it grows.
I followed directions and planted wheat seed in planters filled with a mix of 4 parts vermiculite and 1 part compost. It worked just like they described. The wheat grew to in between 1 and 5 inches. Almost all of the grocery store wheat seeds grew. Then I removed the wheat plants from the planter, and dipped them into a mix I got from
Fungi Perfecti. You can get mixes from other companies as well, but since they are so close geographically, I figured the mycorrhizae will be more acclimated to our climate. Remember to use unchlorinated water for the mix, so you don’t kill it. You can boil your tap water or use distilled or spring water from a grocery store.
When I planted the wheat, I made sure that the roots of the wheat were in contact with the roots of the tree or bush. The packet of dried spores can make a lot of the mixing fluid, but I just made enough for the seedlings I had. Fungi Perfecti advised me to only make enough liquid mix for 2 or 3 days, after which it may have become contaminated. I covered the bowl the mix was in between planting times. I dipped all of the roots of each plant into the mix, and then planted them. Then I poured the rest of the fluid at the base of the trees. Most of the wheat plants grew for a long time. Some now have little kernels of wheat on them.
I just planted my next batch of wheat seeds in the fall after the initial spring planting. Someone asked me if there was any big difference that I noticed in my garden. I really couldn’t tell them I saw a difference. A couple of weeks later, I was gathering mushrooms and I noticed some mushrooms that had been there for awhile, but they hadn’t developed a real stem. I gathered one and brought it for ID to my mushroom club. The sign said, “Scleroderma cepa” after they had sliced it open to help ID it. I thought I had remembered that type as mycorrhizal, so I went on the Fungi Perfecti site and looked for that as an ingredient in the mix. Sure enough, there it was on the list. When I came back with the mushroom from the ID show, I planted it below my other
apple tree that had not yet shown the mushrooms. Hopefully it will grow on that
apple tree too. Since then, I have seen several other mycorrhizal mushrooms growing in other parts of the yard. Many of the mycorrhizal fungi don’t make above ground mushrooms. They make below ground sclerotia, like truffles, so I actually have no idea how many are in my soil now. Hopefully a lot. These mycorrhizal fungi aren’t edible or
medicinal for humans, but they will certainly help our gardens grow and adjust to changes in weather. Think about in nature who waters plants during our long, dry summers. Why don’t most plants in nature get diseases and die? Each species of mycorrhizal fungi does a different task for the trees. After all, for more than 99% of all history, no human ever watered or took care of plants. Mycorrhizal fungi did.
John S
PDX OR
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. I plan to mix them up for my spring plantings, but it'll be a few months at least before I get that far. I'll definitely post lots of pictures of how that works out. I'm thinking of only inoculating half of each of my 2 hugelbeds so a good comparison can be made (as much as I hate giving up efficiency 
).
