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The Benefits of Mycorrhizal Fungi
Provided by Mother Earth News
Instead of using chemical fertilizers and labor-intensive tilling, more gardeners and farmers are choosing a biological approach to soil fertility. They avoid tilling to preserve the soil's structure and promote the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi that protect plants from disease and promote stronger growth and better yields. To ensure these fungi form partnerships with your crops, you can buy special inoculants to apply to your seeds and transplants.
Mycorrhizal fungi are found naturally in soils, especially in those with active soil food webs. The fungi colonize plant roots (parts of these fungi actually grow inside the roots) and fill the surrounding soil with sticky hyphae - thin threads up to 20 feet in length.
Disease organisms have a difficult time getting through the hyphae to attack roots; if they do succeed, the fungi produce antibiotics to kill them. The fungi's long hyphae grow into the subsoil, absorbing phosphorus, trace minerals and water, which they share with their host plants. In return, the plants' roots release carbohydrates to feed the fungi. Essentially, the fungal hyphae function as long extensions of the plants' roots, promoting better plant growth, especially during droughts or in poor soils. Plus, they excrete sticky compounds that glue soil particles into aggregates, keeping the soil open and porous.
Don Chapman, president of Bio-Organics, a company that promotes mycorrhizal innoculants, says plants and the soil food web are "linked by many millions of years of evolution together. The plants are just one element in a very elegant system of relationships among many underground, invisible-to-us organisms. Trying to grow plants by using only crude chemical fertilizers is filled with dead ends, disease, problems and yield failures."
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