Wow Charlie, you're pulling out all the strings, huh??!! What made you start implementing this in the first place? Where did you find this gem of information?
I used to use Pro Mix peat mixes growing my "youthful-days" 420. When I started here at the 420 website, I was looking at the Pro Mix web pages for a peat/perlite mix percentage so I could mix my own. When I was looking, I saw that they also sold versions of Pro Mix with mycorrhizal inoculant additive. I wondered what that was. Pro Mix said it was a vital beneficial fungal microbe inoculant added to Pro Mix for enhanced and vigorous root growth.
I did a little more research on it and found it really works (according to real SCIENCE). So I searched online at Amaz** and found mycorrhizal inoculant products that were sold to mix in with your soil or soilless mix (excluding rockwool). I tried "
Xtreme" mycorrhizal inoculant. It can be used when transplanting or as a top/side dress for existing plants or that can be mixed in fertilizer/compost teas or hydro top-feed situations for better root growth. I guess the mycorrhizal inoculant forms a fungal-web-like structure binding the roots together in the soil and soilless media or the case of hydro - "strings structures" - and helps capture nutrients. Apparently, the plants roots like this and the fungal-web helps the roots absorb and process nutrients better. I used in in all my peat/perlite mixes, so far. A little goes a long way.
When I transplanted my 420 from 1-gal plastic pots recently to fabric bags for the flowering tent, I noted EXTREME root development and growth. I thought about taking a a pic and posting here but I was busy with dirty hands and thought - I'll do it next time. Wish I would have posted a pic - the root growth was phenomenal and the root balls transferred so easily because the roots had fully enclosed the soilless media so tightly. I became sold on mycorrhizal inoculant!
I was doing some research and talking with another professional grower here and he said you need to add some more microbes once in a while and feed and care for those microbes (soil fungi and soil bacteria) so they do not all die out eventually. Those microbes like sugars in the form of black strap molasses and carbs like kelp (me too). Soooo...you see why I prepared a compost tea last weekend that included kelp to feed my little root enhancing buggers (the tea you said: "I'd eat that."). You can also just feed the microbes powdered supplement products like
Recharge that have all that kelp, molasses and things mixed in. Recharge mixes well with compost teas and nutes/water. I have some Recharge. Last weekend, I just wanted to try a powdered compost tea mix I purchased previously first with some added liquid kelp I had. Worked wonders - saw the results within hours.
Well, I was doing some research tonight (as I am watching SF beat the "stink" out of the Chargers) and there are plenty of nitrogen fixing microbes too. Recently, I had a little issue of "lime-greenness" and "veininess" in the flowering tent mature leaves and I added a little iron to green them up. The veg tent also needed a little more nitrogen and I fixed the issue yesterday too. So now I am looking for beneficial microbe products that I can add easily to my growing plants so I do not encounter the slight deficiencies in nutes I have previously encountered. Products that I can add easily by top/side dress or mixed-in with nute/water applications. Products that will help the roots along and add plant vigor and growth through a kind of fungal/bacterial/plant food web. That professional grower I communicated with said "the roots" are the key to awesome 420
So I found that chart/figure that shows the kind of microbes that aid plant roots in development and feeding. There you go...that's the LONG of it. Plenty of books and papers on the subject. I still want to use nutes, maybe, and not go full-blown organic, but I also want vigorous plant growth too and no deficiencies. Maybe I can have the best of both worlds - happiness derives from the simple things in life and is best celebrated in small doses. Happy plants, happy life.
@Krissi1982
