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Many years ago I used to set up a booth at farm and vineyard trade shows, sort of a missionary for bio-methods, where I would answer questions about mycorrhizae and have discussions with all different kinds of growers. While I doubt that those long days ever paid off with enough orders to cover the costs, it did provide an education and some memorable conversations. I recall one tomato grower, from somewhere near Sacramento, who told me that he had converted one of his many fields to organic a few years back. As he put it, "I got curious, and it...

My last newsletter spoke about how earthworms are an indicator of good soil health - the more worms, the better - and that excellent soils can have more than 100 worms per shovelful. One subscriber questioned this high number of worms, saying that he had been gardening for 60 years and had never seen that many in his soil. Here is the answer I gave him: Hello Bob - You raise a good question. I had gardened for more than 50 years (quite successfully, I might add) before discovering that there was another level of plant health/performance beyond what I...

I've seen articles about mycorrhizal fungi that give the impression they are sort of an "add-on" to a plant's root system - something like an alternative fertilizer - instead of accurately describing the beneficial microorganisms' powerful role in plant performance. Just picture removing 90 percent of a plant's roots and then trying to obtain a good yield from that plant. In effect, that is what a plant without mycorrhizae on its roots is up against. Over millions of years, the plant-friendly fungi have created an underground system to deliver nutrients and moisture to their host plants. During that long process...

You can see a lot by just looking sometimes. I recently took a two week vacation. Before I left, I had removed the weeds from three rows of sweet corn in my garden, but didn't get to the fourth row. On my return, I saw that the corn plants that had weeds growing right next to them were several inches taller than all the others. I gave every plant identical amounts of organic fertilizer and mycorrhizal inoculant, so the difference in height was puzzling. You would think that the weeds would be competitors for nutrients and water. Shouldn't the corn...

On the mixed vegetable, grain and dairy farm in Oregon where I grew up, you often heard the phrase, "How does it pencil out?" With the soils and climate in the Willamette Valley you could grow nearly any crop - vegetables, berries, grain, Christmas trees, nursery stock, etc. The issue of how possible crops would "pencil out" involved adding up all the expected input costs and guessing at harvest prices. It seems pretty obvious that the current huge increases in oil prices will have a major effect on the penciling-out for farmers, who can expect dramatic cost hikes in petro-fertilizers...