Now being added to all Halla Nursery & Garden Center Plants
These beneficial microorganisms are one of the biggest stories in gardening today, promising to improve the way that many plants are grown. Almost every agricultural university in the country has been experimenting with them for decades, but until recently they have not been available to the home gardener.In practical terms, these fungal organisms attach to a plant's root system and then search the surrounding soil to bring nutrients, particularly phosphorus, to their host plant. A plant with the right species of mycorrhizae can uptake ten times more nutrients, creating a very vigorous and healthy plant, needing much less fertilizer.
Nature's longest and most successful experiment
Below the soil surface plant communities face many natural stresses. Infertile soils, diseases, drought, extreme temperatures, competition, and wind are not new. To survive, plant species adapt strategies to persist in the physical, chemical and biological stresses that surrounded them. Perhaps the most fundamental and successful strategy, the mycorrhizal relationship, has allowed plants to adapt to the harsh conditions of life on land. Radiating out from the roots of plants are miles of tiny filaments that occupy great expanses of soil volumes and trap mineral nutrients and water essential to support plant growth needs. These tiny filaments (mycorrhizal fungi) actually attach and penetrate between and within the outer cells of the root cortex of plants and effectively become extensions of the root system itself.The association between roots and fungi has been known or suspected since classical times. The word Mycorrhizae is of Greek origin (fungus-roots) and defines the mutually beneficial relationship between an estimated 90% of the world's land plants and this specialized root to root colonizing soil fungi. It is likely that there is no woody plant on the face of the earth that does not form a 'fungus-root' in some part of its range.
What are the benefits?
Mycorrhizal fungi function through a network of threads. At one end the threads attach to and enter the root tissue and the plant and fungus exchange essential materials.- Plants receive minerals, nutrients and water, and other growth promoting substances.
- The fungus receives essential sugars and compounds to fuel its own growth.
- Several miles of mycorrhizal filaments can be present in less than a thimbleful of soil. Mycorrhizal fungal filaments are extensions of root systems and more effective in nutrient and water absorption than the roots themselves.
Many other exchanges occur between plants and their mycorrhizal symbionts
- Mycorrhizal fungi stimulate the plant to produce additional roots.
- Roots in turn secrete a substance upon which stimulate the growth of the fungus. Mycorrhizal fungi release powerful chemicals into the soil that make available elements such as phosphorous, iron, and other tightly bound soil nutrients. Other chemicals produced by Mycorrhizal fungi include enzymes to degrade organic carbon and nitrogen sources.
- Mycorrhizal plants demonstrate enhanced tolerance to drought stress.
- Mycorrhizal fungi attack pathogens or disease organisms entering the root zone. Studies show that many mycorrhizal fungi exhibit strong antibiotic activity and these antibiotics form a chemical barrier protecting plant roots from disease, and some mycorrhizal roots have a tight, interwoven covering of dense filaments that acts as a physical barrier against the invasion of root diseases.
- Mycorrhizal fungi also improves the soil structure by producing humic compounds and organic 'glues' that bind soils into aggregates and improves soil porosity. In sandy or compacted soils, the ability of mycorrhizal fungi to promote soil structure may be the most important factor improving plant performance.
