a symbiotic association between a fungus
and the roots of your plants that helps you grow bountiful fruits and vegetables
let's see the effect of mycorrhizae
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so to see the benefits of mycorrhizae
you could either buy a product that contains mycorrhizae
or you could even add them separately to your soil
and in most cases it may already be present in your soil
especially if you use a lot of organic material like compost
so let's first understand what all this means in a mycorrhizal Association
the fungus attaches to the roots of the plant
and provides increased absorption of nutrients and minerals to the plant
in turn, the plant provides glucose to the fungi
this is a mutual relationship
that benefits both the plant as well as the fungi
so let's look at a common product that's available in most garden stores
this a ProMix HP with mycorrhizae
its a professional growing medium it's a soilless
growing medium and it also contains mycorrhizae
which would greatly benefit your plants as we will see
So the high porosity
usually means that it has a lot of
porous material like Perlite
and this product contains just three things
peat moss, perlite and mycorrhizae
now to neutralize the acidity of the peat moss
it also has some added garden lime or gypsum
so this is how the ProMix HP medium looks like
its light it's fluffy it provides excellent drainage
and is a very lightweight potting mix that you can use
so with a soil-less mix you need to use a fertilizer
and you can either use an organic fertilizer are you can use
a slow release fertilizer like Osmocote
Now we can create a soil-less potting mix
by using organic fertilizer first
so as you can see what I'm doing here is I'm adding the ProMix HP
soil less growing medium
and then I'm sprinkling some organic fertilizer in between
now it's important that you sprinkle some fertilizer and mixed it
at all stages
you can do the same thing with a slow-release fertilizer to like Osmocote
and instead of mixing it just at the top layer
after each layer of soil that you add to your
container you sprinkle some slow release fertilizer
and make sure your mix it very well with the potting mix
so you could either use organic fertilizer
or a slow release fertilizer both of which work equally well
since this product already contains mycorrhizae
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after 30 days these are some carrot seedlings that were sowed in regular
potting mix
and as you can see they've grown reasonably well
however look at the same carrot seeds that were
planted around the same time in fact about 20 days earlier
and just look at how nicely they've grown compared to the regular potting mix
so this is proof that the
mycorrhizal mix really works very well
and here are some cabbage that's growing in this Promix HP medium
versus that growing in the ground
you can see a big difference the ones growing in the ground are not as prolific
so when I bought this product it actually looked a little expensive to me
however when I realized that it has peat moss it has perlite
has gypsum and most importantly mycorrhizae
I think if you add up the cost for creating your own potting mix with all
these premium ingredients
you're gonna be spending a lot more than this
so I highly recommend that you get this product it's very good value for money
and you will grow bountiful fruits and vegetables for a long time
So let me know if you've tried
this product or any other product which has mycorrhizae
I'll see you again soon
Happy Gardening!
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