How to Do It Series 2 - Episode 2 - Culturing Mycorrhizal Fungi

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okay so what we're going to do in this

segment you're going to it's a very very

special little technique you're going to

learn uh really cost-saving because of

course micral fungi aren't something you

can Brew up they have to be harvested

from living plant roots so often you'll

see products advertised with micral

fungi and and there suggestions that you

can put them in the compost and grow

them and it's absolute nonsense they'll

only grow on living plant roots and when

you look at the research on Commercial

producers of microle spores and and and

microle propag a little pieces of SP of

High um you'll find that they they take

a plant that feeds plenty of sugar and

that has a big root system and the

favored plant is sgum sedan now we

couldn't get sgum sedan for this so

sorum's a close second it's has a big

root system and it has uh feeds a lot of

sugar and that of course really really

helps the the propagation and looking

after that micro risal growth on the

roots and so what we're going to do

using the potty mix the beautiful potty

mix we just made uh which we actually

designed with that touch of clay because

micros of fungi like to have a little

percentage of clay in their growing

medium uh we're going to take we're

going to fill this grow bag and then

we're going to put treat the seed with

micro rizle and a couple of other things

I'll explain how and why we're doing

that and then we're going to put them in

the bag and grow this bag full of roots

and when we get to you know a point that

the soams being in there for a little

while I developed a massive root system

and then we just chop the top off we

take those roots we can I'll talk about

how we'll do that uh shortly but first

of all we'll fill our bag

up with the with the lovely potting

mix thanks Kyle

nice looking stuff isn't

it this is some bags that we had at one

of the Farms that we grew Ginger this

this been quite a move towards trying to

go Ginger and bags but we found that it

wasn't as effective as grinded in the

soil we had much much more cost costly

cost effective to gr on the soil and we

had better yields on the soil so we've

we've got lots of these bags Ling around

there

that's probably enough is it so I just

get you to me handle that on

here a bit more just a little

more so we ised quite a lot don't

we so we've got our bag of beautiful

potty mix with all the nutrients in it

and now we're going to get ready to

prepare the seed treatment now the seed

treatment we're going to is going to

involve a product from neutr Tech

a product called platform which is

several strains of micros of fungi some

tricoderma and also some bacillus

organisms so it's quite a nice little

mixture of synergistic organisms but of

course the dominant one will be the

micro rizle and we find that this

specific strain of tricoderma doesn't

compete with the microle so it's

appropriate for this now it's only tiny

amounts it's actually we use that

because we can't you can't really

overdose it so we just put half a

teaspoon into this 100 m of water and

we'll stir that round and sort of mix it

in

bit and now we'll add the second

ingredient uh is a product that I'm very

excited about cuz we just learned how to

brew it and this is a an aota inoculum

called bioen it's something neutri had

for years but we've never known how to

brew it now we know how to I'm going to

share that in an upcoming podcast in

fact in one of these videos we're going

to share teach you how to multiply how

to turn one liter into 100 L of

organisms that can either fix nitrogen

directly on the leaf or you you can put

in the soil you can put as a seed

treatment in this case we're going to

put it with the micro risal fungi and

the reason for that a great friend Hugh

LEL used to describe the relationship

between aota and micro fungi as probably

the kickass most important relationship

of any synergistic relationship of of

soil life and he described the reasons

for that I mean they're quite complex

but the very simple uh explanation is

that the micr of fungi of course need

protein to grow this massive 10 times

the original surface area and you don't

really want to steal that protein from

your host plant I mean you can but

you're going to compromise it's going to

be more partic to suck that uh that

building those building blocks from the

plant and so ideally if you've got aota

this this nitrogen fixing organism the

most powerful of the nitrogen fixing

organisms living in sink and nestling up

to the micral fungi it's constantly

producing nitrogen it's constantly

fixing nitrogen and the and so that

becomes the nitrogen base for protein

building which is wonderful for for the

micro risle organism on the other side

of the equation to fix nitrogen you've

got to have soluble phosphorus and every

enzymic reaction and it's an enzymic

reaction when you've got to pull an En

enzimatic re reaction when you've got to

take the gas and pull it down using an

enzyme called

nitrogenase um and so in this instance

to start every enzymic reaction uh you

need this thing called ATP adenosine

triphosphate and so you have to have

some sort soluble phosphate constantly

present for the ongoing production of

ATP to allow you to fix nitrogen and of

course the big claim to fame for micros

of fungi is that they're making

phosphate available they're releasing

acids they're going out and Mining

phosphate and the Zotac delivering next

door say new Beauty and taking up that

phosphate so that's just part of several

synergies between those two organisms

but we're going to make sure that

Synergy happens in our pot so we're

going to put a little bit of Bio in uh

and it's only just as you can see here a

couple of a couple of Little Squirts

it's only really a mill is all that's

required for this little treatment that

we're going to do and that's probably a

little too much and then we're going to

send the boys off to work with The

Lunchbox of all of our seed treatments

and all of our experience with seed

treatments the most powerful is is a an

all inclusive fertilizer called root and

choot probably an unfortunate choice of

name but but but basically uh remarkable

in terms of it SE It's a Wonderful

fertilizer full stop it's a wonderful

foler it's wonderful def ferate liquid

inject but in this case we find with

seed treatments we get this tremendous

response when we combine micro rizle and

Rootin shoot together and that's what

we're going to do here so we take a

little bit of root and shoot again we're

talking just a couple of Mills into our

solution as you can see how concentrated

it

is all of the trace minerals all of the

major minerals fulvic acid kelp amino

acids trional uh even things like

selenium are built into root and choot

so it's really quite a special

fertilizer and so we've got our little

seed treatment now now we take our

sorghum seed and we got a little I'll

just show you a handful there we got a

little handful of sorghum seed that may

be might be more than what we're going

to need in this pot but this is just

basically you can get the idea there uh

and now we're going to put our seed

treatment in

here and then we're just going to leave

that for about 10 minutes so we'll be

back in 10 minutes time and then we're

going to plant them and they will be

inoculated fully inoculated uh with the

three components well not an inoculator

but we'll have the food source and we'll

have the bio the aotto actor the micros

the funy with the trod and basilla

species it'll be a nice little package

and what we're seeking as I pointed out

is for the sorum uh which has a big root

structure to fill that entire bag so

it's not going to put more than one

plant in there it'll just be a mass of

roots and the aim of this whole process

is that basically once once we've got

that bag full of roots we can chop off

the top uh and the a couple of ways we

can do this we can take that whole root

ball and shove it into a compost tea

extractor something with quite violent

extraction and blast the micar rizle and

the other organisms like a compost tea

but that becomes the base for sorry

compost extract that that comes the base

for the extract you're going to extract

everything off that root uh or you can

run it through a muler uh and just

crunch it all up and even though you're

chopping up high it doesn't matter they

grow from little pieces and so you can

make your inoculum in that way was

interesting I was talking to Adam who's

on the camera at the moment and he was

suggesting uh you know kind of a similar

thing that an ancient sort of practice

by the American Indians where they would

take if they were going to grow tomatoes

for example and it probably wasn't the

example but we'll talk about that

because it's a one practical use for it

you'd go out and find a wild tomato a

wild member of the cachia family uh and

you'd Harvest The Roots same story and

you'd chop them all up and you'd use

that as an inoculum to pick up that

whole wild inoculum uh and all of the

benefits that are carry naturally on

that species gring your soil you're now

going to put on your commercial variety

which is actually a really good idea

Okay so we've waited 10 15 minutes we've

soaked our seed uh We've drained off the

liquid and actually put it into the bag

so we might as well make use of that

microbal soup that we created and now

we've got our seed and we're going to

sprinkle the seed it's probably a little

too much but we'll use at least half of

this and we'll sprinkle it we don't want

them we still want to have this much

between plants I mean you could make it

you know

there too much competition if we go too

heavy and then we're going to cover it

with a shovel another shovel for because

there's space to do that so we'll just

quickly do

that okay that should just about do it I

think that's good now we'll cover that

about this

much it's going to be exciting to watch

this

happen okay now we just put this we

leave it make sure it's got moisture um

and we'll put it somewhere where it's

got full sun and you know we'll have the

normal germination period and we'll a

little be earlier than normal because

part of the sea treatment is a much

faster germination now that same mix we

use on garlic clothes cuz we grow garlic

here commercially and typically it's 10

days for garlic we soak for half an hour

with garlic clothes rather than just

that shorter period half an hour and we

get always not sometimes always full

germination in 4 days and we get this

plant that jumps out of the ground with

with that combination of aactor microle

fungi the trod dermat there and Rootin

chot that's our formula for for treating

garlic clothes but so we take this now

put it out somewhere in the Sun and and

we may even be a to show you some photos

as the grows and come back and show you

the before and after photos at that

point thanks for watching

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