Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - RE: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi and fungicides

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Scott Williamson" <swilliamson@acespower.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi and fungicides
  • Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 13:49:47 -0500

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi and fungicides
Lon, I don't think it's a plug.  I found more specifics and especially detailed information (such as the list of herbicides/pesticides, etc) on organic growing in general in your book than in a lot of the other organic gardening books I have.  I found it quite useful information even outside of fruit growing.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lon J. Rombough [mailto:lonrom@hevanet.com]
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 1:28 PM
To: michael@herbsandapples.com, North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Mycorrhizal fungi and fungicides

This is REALLY preaching to the choir with Michael, but for the rest (and pardon the plug) there are a good number of very useful products for organic fruit growing in general included in The Grape Grower.  The same principles apply to all fruits.  
   As to mycorrhizal fungi themselves, you can't just innoculate and walk away.  The fungi (indeed, ALL the soil life) needs lots of organic matter and  the soil itself needs to be disturbed as little as possible.  It's an ongoing, dynamic process, just as it is in the wild, and you have to adapt your methods to it, if you want to follow that way.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com
Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003



All the pluses that flow from biological symbiosis are incredibly well-summed up in the article that Lon posted. Thanks, guy! I¹ve long been advocating that people find healthy wild trees and take a few spadefuls of inoculated soil to their fruit orchards and/or compost piles if woody in nature.



But all this begs one big question: How much do we undo of these mycorrhizal benefits when we use fungicides in the orchard and vineyard? I don¹t know that it matters here if we¹re talking captan or sulfur, though maybe there are some gentle fungicides someone wants to point out. Is there a balance point between the two where a minimal fungicide program does not break the mycorrhizal chain?





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page