Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Greg Bell <gregbell@znet.com>]

I think I was mainly wondering how the sellers grow mycorrhizae and 
whether the same conditions (or a special area just for producing it) 
could be done by the small-time gardener.


> Don't slice and dice (plow or till) your soils and be sure to not rotate 
> your crop into a family of plants that is not mycorrhizal but rather is 
> capable of using the same genus and species of mycorrhizae that you have 
> established.

> From what I find on google, the interplay with rotation seems to be still 
deep in the research phase and not so much in the "do exactly this" 
recommendation phase.

As a hobby/amateur/small food grower it would be really useful to have the 
experts put the things we should work on in order of impact.  That way we 
can work our way down the list over time - both in terms of education and 
work on the land, and know we're getting maximum benefit as we go.  For 
example (a guess):

1) Soil pH
2) Soil moisture content
3) Soil salinity
4) Soil drainage
5) Soil NPK
6) Soil structure
7) Soil humus/organic content
8) Soil macronutrients
9) Cultivar/variety selection
10) Crop rotation
11) Soil micronutrients
12) Planting depth/techniques
13) Mycorrizae innoculation
14) Mycorrizal species sensitive crop rotation
15) Beneficial nematodes
16) Something sub-atomic requiring 100s of thousands of dollars to analyze :)

My fear is that my idea would quickly devolve into an argument with Expert
A claiming that #11 is really the #1 thing to worry about, and Expert B
saying no way, even being at #11 is too high given current research.... and
we amateurs would be left back exactly where we started:  guessing!


~gb