Well said, Hostafan! The same goes for the claims re "gardening by the moon ". People who claim that it does work do not conduct scientific experiments.
I agree that the fungi are essential for healthy soil. I am very sceptical about a dry powder doing the job, as opposed to live fungi in the soil. I think that adding a bucket or so of good compost will add beneficial organisms.
Having worked with plants and in the garden trade for approximately forty-years , I have never felt the need to use , nor seen the purpose of these products . Probably just another money-spinner for the horticultural trade.
If (as said above) your soil is good they should not be necessary .
Like the proverbial lemmings , if 'Monty' used it , some people have to do as told .
We have all said these things before so we have to agree to disagree on this one. I find it does work in the specific situations I have outlined. In the case of the programme I certainly do not follow Monty blindly but on this occasion I think his advice was sound. The old garden was full of established roses that had precious memories for her, she had to dig up mature plants. The plants were put in plastic bags, when they realised the new garden was in no fit state to re-plant they were potted up. They were then disturbed again when they were finally planted out. So they were disturbed 3 times with a short space of time, in those circumstances I would have used it as well. She had no losses, she was happy job done.
Hosta where are you looking and what sort of evidence do you want? These products have been used commercially for years, either to boost crops in impoverished soils or in landscape amelioration again where poor subsoil is involved or in the arboreal trade where they are transplanting large mature specimens. I don't think they would use this if it had no benefit.
In this publication the authors describe a comparison of grass seedling plant establishment in a poor substrate soil excavated from the channel tunnel. They did a number of studies in parallel. It took 8 months for natural fungi to become established. Seedlings grown in a neutral substrate grown direct compared with those deliberately inoculated with fungi, also compared to plants raised in commercial compost which presumably would have their own colonies of fungi. The plants raised in neutral substrate only performed very poorly, initially the plants inoculated and the plants raised in commercial compost performed similarly but at the end of 14 months the plants inoculated had 7 times the number of seed spikes and 5 times greater weight of seed. They concluded that deliberate inoculation was a valuable method for rapid establishment of these plants in poor soil.
By using the somewhat derogatory term of 'proverbial lemmings' , I was referring to the 'general public' who follow everything Monty says as unquestionable , not you personally **
You have quite obviously researched your subject and I respect your views . As I stated , I have never used such products but many of my customers do , convinced through TV and magazine adverts of their beneficial values . I have yet to see .
** I find Monty more annoying than useful ; described as the 'UKs best loved gardener' , he is also the UKs most highest paid in all probability . Why I don't know !
From what I've seen of him on Gardeners World he tends to generalise , avoiding specialist subjects whilst sometimes getting plant details wrong ; what could be a better waste of broadcasting time than watching him plant tulip bulbs , a tree-fern or blathering on about the merits of a compost heap .
A better format of programme would be a detailed show every week covering a particular group of plants , featuring specialists in their particular subject , and not some overpaid 'all-rounder' .
The examples you quote are cases where plants are being grown in subsoil, which will naturally lack mycorrhizal fungi. Inoculation in those cases is quite sensible. But for planting plants in regular garden soil the benefit (if any) is likely to be much lower.
Inoculation in the Dodds paper was also carried out using a fresh mix of fungi that had been cultured specially, so it should have a high success rate. We don't know what the success rate is using commercial powdered products because there aren't any published trials.
Looking on the Rootgrow website, they say this:
rootgrow™ is now established as one of the most effective and reliable planting treatments. As well as being part of best planting practice by the RHS, using mycorrhizal fungi is regularly referenced on TV Gardening programmes and by garden writers in the popular press.
Note that they don't cite any proper studies on their product - they say it's popular with garden writers and is seen on TV.
Posts
Well said, Hostafan! The same goes for the claims re "gardening by the moon ". People who claim that it does work do not conduct scientific experiments.
I'm in no way saying " it doesn't work" I just want to see proper evidence. To date, I've seen none.
I agree that the fungi are essential for healthy soil. I am very sceptical about a dry powder doing the job, as opposed to live fungi in the soil. I think that adding a bucket or so of good compost will add beneficial organisms.
Having worked with plants and in the garden trade for approximately forty-years , I have never felt the need to use , nor seen the purpose of these products . Probably just another money-spinner for the horticultural trade.
If (as said above) your soil is good they should not be necessary .
Like the proverbial lemmings , if 'Monty' used it , some people have to do as told
.
We have all said these things before so we have to agree to disagree on this one. I find it does work in the specific situations I have outlined. In the case of the programme I certainly do not follow Monty blindly but on this occasion I think his advice was sound. The old garden was full of established roses that had precious memories for her, she had to dig up mature plants. The plants were put in plastic bags, when they realised the new garden was in no fit state to re-plant they were potted up. They were then disturbed again when they were finally planted out. So they were disturbed 3 times with a short space of time, in those circumstances I would have used it as well. She had no losses, she was happy job done.
Hosta where are you looking and what sort of evidence do you want? These products have been used commercially for years, either to boost crops in impoverished soils or in landscape amelioration again where poor subsoil is involved or in the arboreal trade where they are transplanting large mature specimens. I don't think they would use this if it had no benefit.
Dodd, J.C., Dougall, T.A., Clapp, J.P. et al. Biodiversity and Conservation (2002) 11: 39. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014062311463
In this publication the authors describe a comparison of grass seedling plant establishment in a poor substrate soil excavated from the channel tunnel. They did a number of studies in parallel. It took 8 months for natural fungi to become established. Seedlings grown in a neutral substrate grown direct compared with those deliberately inoculated with fungi, also compared to plants raised in commercial compost which presumably would have their own colonies of fungi. The plants raised in neutral substrate only performed very poorly, initially the plants inoculated and the plants raised in commercial compost performed similarly but at the end of 14 months the plants inoculated had 7 times the number of seed spikes and 5 times greater weight of seed. They concluded that deliberate inoculation was a valuable method for rapid establishment of these plants in poor soil.
Iain R
By using the somewhat derogatory term of 'proverbial lemmings' , I was referring to the 'general public' who follow everything Monty says as unquestionable , not you personally **
You have quite obviously researched your subject and I respect your views . As I stated , I have never used such products but many of my customers do , convinced through TV and magazine adverts of their beneficial values . I have yet to see .
** I find Monty more annoying than useful ; described as the 'UKs best loved gardener' , he is also the UKs most highest paid in all probability . Why I don't know !
From what I've seen of him on Gardeners World he tends to generalise , avoiding specialist subjects whilst sometimes getting plant details wrong ; what could be a better waste of broadcasting time than watching him plant tulip bulbs , a tree-fern or blathering on about the merits of a compost heap .
A better format of programme would be a detailed show every week covering a particular group of plants , featuring specialists in their particular subject , and not some overpaid 'all-rounder' .
Then we all might learn something .
Iain R,
The examples you quote are cases where plants are being grown in subsoil, which will naturally lack mycorrhizal fungi. Inoculation in those cases is quite sensible. But for planting plants in regular garden soil the benefit (if any) is likely to be much lower.
Inoculation in the Dodds paper was also carried out using a fresh mix of fungi that had been cultured specially, so it should have a high success rate. We don't know what the success rate is using commercial powdered products because there aren't any published trials.
Looking on the Rootgrow website, they say this:
rootgrow™ is now established as one of the most effective and reliable planting treatments. As well as being part of best planting practice by the RHS, using mycorrhizal fungi is regularly referenced on TV Gardening programmes and by garden writers in the popular press.
Note that they don't cite any proper studies on their product - they say it's popular with garden writers and is seen on TV.
Iain R:maybe if I was gardening in :
"poor substrate soil excavated from the channel tunnel. " I might consider it, but in reality, no.
I'm looking for empirical, peer accessed data following double blind experiments. If you'd like to point me towards any, I'll gladly read it.
This is not a medicinal product covered by the Medical Devices Agency.
I have said before I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one & leave it at that.
Iain says:
"I have said before I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one & leave it at that."
I am happy to concur.
There are plenty of subject on which we agree so no need to dwell upon those we do not.