Monday, June 3, 2013

planting tomatoes

field garden1

Things are moving along nicely in the field garden.

We planted our tomatoes at the end of May and almost forgot that our farmer friend had given us some mycorrhizae for our tomato plants. Earlier in the spring, we visited C. and she mentioned that she was planning to dip her tomato roots in a mycorrhizal solution in hopes of lessening the chances of tomato diseases such as early blight and septoria leaf spot. She doled us out a portion and suggested around 1 tsp per gallon of water.

tomato innoculant
epsom and bone meal

Bone meal and Epsom salts in the planting holes.
dipping roots
Dipping the roots.

A storm arrived in the days following, and we lost 4 of our plants. Luckily, we have extras.

I'm excited to see if the mycorrhizae makes a difference. The four replacement plants won't be dipped in the solution, so it will be easy to see the difference. I'll be sure to report back.

Have any of you tried this? What have you noticed?



4 comments:

  1. We have just started using mycorrhizae this year, so I haven't seen the difference yet, but am curious to see what we notice in soil improvement. We are using it a little differently, mixing it right into the soil at time of planting. This was first recommended by a friend of ours, who saw his garden soil quality greatly improve, and increased plant growth, with the addition.

    We read a really interesting article recently about plant communication through mycorrhizae. I'll try to find it again and will pass it along.

    Your field garden looks fantastic, Shari!

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  2. That sounds great. I'd love to read the article. Thank you, Abby!

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    1. I found it! It appears to be out there in a number of places now - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855

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  3. I really wanted to try the mycorrhizae, but couldn't find any locally quickly enough before my seedlings died off. I did add bone meal & epsom salts to my planting hole for the first time, and my plants are growing 2x as fast and strong as the last few years.

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