permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

From: jennifergiles@gmail.com [compost_tea] <compost_tea@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 11:10 PM
Subject: [compost_tea] Fruiting tree/plant species paired best with which
fungal & other microbe species?
To: compost_tea@yahoogroups.com

Hi. I'm new here. I've been a gardenweb member for --I dunno--15 years, but
it's getting harder to have conversations there because there is now food
soil web or aerated compost tea forum, and "organic" isn't the same thing.

I'm trying to become better acquainted with specific microbe species, their
functions and the types of plants that prefer them. Most of the five
questions below relate to pairing specific plant species to specific fungal
species.

I'm growing fruit: a tomatoes, fruit trees, 50 or 60 varieties of them and
fruiting vines. The fruit trees are mostly prunus (cherry, apricot, plum,
peach, nectarine, & hybrids) or citrus or apple. I also have a couple
avocados, mangos, guavas, loquat. Also bramble berries, southern highbush
blueberries, kiwi, etc. Also  I'm in zone 10 - Los Angeles.

I know from reading "Teaming with Microbes" that since these are hardwood
trees, they prefer fungally dominated tea, and dry chunky "brown" (carbon)
surface mulch. And fruit trees are likely to prefer ectomycorrhizal fungi
to the endomycorrhizal kind. I feel pretty comfortable making fungally
dominated or bacterially dominated AACT from worm castings (my own worms),
fish hydrolysate, kelp meal, alfalafa meal, molasses. If any of this isn't
quite right, please correct me.

1) Are there preferred fungal inoculants out there for fruit trees and
vines?

I bought the E. B. Stone Organics "Tree & Shrub Food" because it has a
bunch of microbes in it. It actually seems more like "microbe food."
(Ingredients below.) However... I really don't know what each one does and
which plant species prefer it.

 Ingredients:  Blood Meal, Feather Meal, Bone Meal, Chicken Manure,
Sulphate of Potash, Kelp Meal, Bat Guano, Alfalfa Meal, Humic Acid,
Beneficial Bacteria RBC104, Micronized Mycorrhizae

 Bacteria: bacillus subtilis, b lichenformis, b. pumilus,  paenibacillus
polymyxa,  streptomyces lydicus, streptomyces greiseus

 Ecto Mycorrhizae: Trichoderma harzianum; Trichoderma viride; Pisolithus
tinctorius; Rizopogon villosuli; Rizopogon luteolus; Rizopogon amylopogon;
Rizopogon fulvigelba

 Endo Mycorrhizae: Glomus intraradices; Glomus mosseae; Glomus aggregatum.

2) I bet there is a spreadsheet somewhere that says which fungi pair will
with which plant species. I'd love to see one. (Specifically blueberry,
blackberry hybrids, fruit trees, tomatoes etc.)

3) I have had really good luck with tomato vines in their 2nd year using
AACT. (The only problem is spider mites.)  So my question is... is there a
chance that these older "perennial" tomatoes might benefit from fungally
dominated AACT, prefer brown mulch, etc?

4) I came back from vacation to find two things. A neighbor who hangs out
in my yard with their dogs left a bag of miracle grow soil where she was
"filling in" the holes in the raised tree beds where the dogs dug. What do
I do? Can I just dig it out and assume no harm? (That is, if I can locate
it.)

5) Returning from same vacation I found a multi-budded peach tree ailing. The
few leaves it had had on each of the five varieties had withered and dried,
and will soon fall off, I am sure. (I have pics if needed.) I saw some bugs
but no earthworms. It's had several treatments of AACT prior to vacation.
It was not treated with mycorrhizae when I planted it in January in a
raised bed of finished compost. I immediately took off the chunky
commercial bark brown mulch. I aerated some of that microbes & food for
trees (see above) in water and poured it on. I recovered it with a mulch of
dried brown leaves, and a smattering of the old mulch. I caught my cat
about to pee in it this morning. It was hot and abnormally humid here last
week while I was gone, but my neighbor watered it. Ideas? Can I try to
inoculate it with mycorrhizal fungi now? If so...How??

Posted by: jennifergiles@gmail.com
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-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/