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Re: More on Doreen's tomato-growing experiment

Darryl Clark wrote:
> 
> Hello Janet:
> 
> As much as I detest being the least bit serious, or technical on this
> topic, I must admit that I agree with some of your reservations as to
> how Doreen set up her test.  I wish that she had not resorted to
> additional fertilizer on her tomatoes.  It seems that she proved
> Myco+fish meal+miracle grow = higher yields.  We'll never know what
> would have happened if she'd let nature take it's course.  I haven't
> used any kind of fertilizer on my outside plants for years. I get
> consistently higher yields than my chemical dependent neighbors.
> Furthermore, since I dropped the chems, I have NEVER needed to
> spray/dust/squash/etc for insect pests. My property is the insect
> capital of the southeast, and yet they much prefer the weeds that grow
> out of the carolina clay, to my pampered food crops.  I have a few
> tropicals indoors, and I will be planting many more tender crops in my
> winter garden this year.  I have still been using miracle grow as a
> supplement in my potted plants, and I want to break the habit
> completely.  I tried Don Chapmans bugs on two lemon trees that got stuck
> in limbo during the UPS stike.  When I finally got them they had
> completely defoliated, and stems were turning yellow.  Don said it would
> take about 8 weeks before I saw any effects.  I used his Myco. on the
> worse looking of the two lemons, and just added compost to the other.
> In 10 weeks, the myco treated lemon tree has caught up and passed the
> other, in terms of new leaf and stem growth.  In addition to now being
> noticably larger and fuller, it is now loaded with flower buds,  while
> it's companion is showing no signs of budding so-far.  Now once again
> this is not a scientific experiment.  But the best I can do is try tests
> on plants I am familiar with.  I've done numeable tests of compost
> verses various other planting mediums. I've done numerous tests of
> different type of compost input materials.  I would love to see some
> form of reproducable confirmation of what I already believe.
> 
> By the way, If a fertilizer's formula is 10-10-10, what's the other 70%
> made of?
> 
> Darryl Clark
> 
> Janet Wintermute wrote:
> >
> > This is a clarification of my post of yesterday concerning Doreen
> > Howard's tomato-growing experiment.  Daryl Clark has posted Doreen's
> > complete report on the experiment.  I was working from my memory of a
> > somewhat shorter version of that report which Doreen posted to the
> > Square Foot Gardening Listserver a few months ago.
> >
> > The most damaging error I committed was inaccurately stating that
> > Doreen did not note significant yield improvements on the plants that
> > received Don Chapman's mycorrhizal fungi.  The stats in what Daryl
> > posted clearly indicate much higher numbers of fruit from the
> > fungi-treated plants.
> >
> > I correctly remembered that she said the seedlings so treated were
> > bushier and grew faster.  But as the complete report shows, the
> > fungi-treated tomatoes produced many more fruits (though they were
> > smaller than the fruits of plants not receiving the fungi).
> >
> > In private correspondence with me, Doreen stated that it is Don
> > Chapman's view that nitrogen overload, rather than just the use of
> > synthetic chemical fertilizers, is what kills mycorrhizal fungi.  Because
> > Doreen used small amounts of synthetics, she does not think that N
> > overload negatively affected the fungi on the plants in her test that
> > received both Chapman's stuff and some synthetic boosts.
> >
> > Bargyla has repeatedly posted that the synthetic chemical fertilizers kill
> > these valuable mycorrhizae.  She did not name N as the culprit per se,
> > however.  Nor did she imply that nutrition *overload* was the culprit.
> >
> > I'm not sure we can establish whether Don or Bargyla is right about this
> > problem.  So in setting up my experiment for '98, I'm not planning to use
> > any synthetics on the fungi-treated plants.  All my mycorrhizae will be
> > functioning at full speed so to speak, undampened by contact with
> > synthetic amendments regardless of which element in them is the killer.
> >
> > This is the most interesting thread we've had on the Agrisynergy List
> > lately.  I'm receiving some private mail from Listers, too, and will attempt
> > to bring selected portions of that information out to the List next week,
> > when I return to the office and can once again post.
> >
> > If upping the number of plants in the test from 30 to 32 will help with the
> > statistics, as another person suggested, that's certainly doable.  (I hope
> > he didn't mean 32 plants receiving each treatment; that's NOT feasible for
> > me at home.)
> >
> > A third correspondent suggests to me that the whole experiment belongs
> > in a sterile soilless mix.  Not only can I not manage this in the real world, I
> > think such a change would be misguided.  The world of soil
> > microorganisms is complicated; mycorrhizal fungi are probably working
> > synergistically with many elements in natural soil that they couldn't work
> > with in a sterile medium.  So transporting the experiment to a sterile
> > platform could badly distort the efficacy data, thus contributing to the
> > "BS" factor that we're all trying to steer clear of here.
> >
> > Basically, if all my experimental plants are grown in the same soil and
> > some receive just fungi while others receive just synthetics following
> > label instructions and true controls get nothing except the experience of
> > growin in the same soil next door to the treated plants, I believe we will
> > get very usable results concerning the influence of mycorrhizal fungi vs.
> > synthetic chemicals on fruit production in tomatoes.
> >
> > By holding the experiment down to just one variety of tomato, I think we
> > have eliminated a variable, which is always a good thing to do
> > scientifically.
> >
> > By picking Brandywine, which doesn't set much fruit compared to
> > modern hybrid toms, I have automatically decreased the amount of effort
> > I'll have to take on.  (While harvesting heaps of my favorite tomato
> > anyway!)
> >
> > By growing all the plants in one raised bed with homogenous soil, I have
> > minimized the influence of subtle variations from bed to bed that might be
> > in play mainly through leftovers from nitrogen-fixing plants grown in prior
> > years.  (Doreen's mention of the white nodules on the fungi-treated
> > tomato plants grown adjacent to a legume certainly suggest synergy
> > between the fungi and whatever it is in legumes that fixes N....)
> >
> > Will share more refinements in the game plan as I absorb future posts
> > and private e-mails on this subject.
> >
> > Happy New Year to all.  The gardening catalogs are beginning to arrive in
> > my mailbox: I'm a happy camper.
> >
> > --Janet
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