permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On 3/22/2013 6:15 PM, Alia Tsang wrote:
> That's an interesting question. On the one hand, mycorrhizae need plants to
> grow, I have a gut feeling in compost tea they'd be out-competed by the
> bacteria and fungi that are used to being free-living. On the other hand,
> one of the methods I see a lot for experimentally inoculating plants with
> mycorrhizae is to mix soil that previously hosted plants colonized by
> mycorrhizae with new soil. So maybe if you use the compost tea very quickly
> after adding the mycorrhizal inoculant soil you'll still have enough living
> mycorrhizae to inoculate plants.
>
> For the best results, you'd want to inoculate the plant before it gets
> sick, though. Part of the way mycorrhizae protect against disease is by
> coating or surrounding the root so other stuff can't get in. The
> mycorrhizae should be introduced to the plant when it's young, so that
> other stuff doesn't start living on the root and block the mycorrhizae from
> colonizing. Also, mycorrhizae generally colonize the youngest roots. So
> just rub some good dirt on the roots when you're planting instead. :)
That's brilliant and seems to explain the mechanisms of infection of 
otherwise healthy plants by pathogenic microorganisms,
at least  the fungal ones.