 Okay, let's wrap up tonight with a talk on soil health. And I don't know if you ever heard of my co riso fungi, but it is important for growing healthy plants. And so here to share with us her knowledge on this beneficial fungi is Emily how Emily's the horticulture extension agent in Ward County, and she holds a degree in environmental sciences and a master's degree in land resources and environmental sciences. Emily enjoys gardening and spending time outside. Emily, welcome to the forums. Like talk said, my name is Emily how and I'm here to talk about my co riso fungi. Fungi or fungi, it really just depends on who's speaking on the pronunciation of that. But I first want to say whoops, and yes, he was a non discrimination university. So if you're interested in meeting that contact your local extension agent or the person at the bottom of this screen. So let's start out with what are micro riso fungi? Like maybe never heard of it. So there's a billion micro organisms and one teaspoon of soil. So if you were to go out to your garden and pick up the one teaspoon of soil and look at it, there's a billion of micro organisms in there. A micro organism is anything microscopic. So that could be a bacteria or it could be fungus, it really just depends on the size of the organism. So in that teaspoon, there's a bunch of different relationships going on. And one of those is a micro riso fungal relationship. And that is a really interesting relationship that we're going to dive into. So micro riso in Greek means fungal root. So it has this symbiotic relationship with plants and it benefits the soil and the plants and the fungus. So what is a symbiotic relationship? A symbiotic relationship is when there's a relationship between two organisms. Depending on the relationship, it can be considered a parasitic relationship where one organism benefits and the other ends up not benefiting or it can be a beneficial relationship. So this is my favorite example of a symbiotic relationship. These are starlings and buffalo. And I showed this picture to my administrative assistant. Her first comment was we don't have those cows in Montana or in North Dakota. And she's right, we don't have these in North Dakota. I believe they're native to Africa. But these starlings will perch on the buffalo and they will pick out the lice and the ticks that make their homes on the buffalo. So the starlings benefit in that they get a free meal. And the buffalo benefits because it gets relief from ticks and lice. So this is a really great example of a beneficial symbiotic relationship. There's a similar relationship between the mycorrhizal fungi and our plants and our soils. So there's a bunch of different relationships with plant roots. We're not going to touch on all of them because they can get really complex and confusing. So I'm only going to focus on the mycorrhizal interactions. And there's four types. But the main one is called our vescular mycorrhizal fungi. And it's often abbreviated as AMF. And it is in 70% of our plant species. And it includes most crop plants. So most of the plants that we put in our garden or in our fields or grow food from has this interaction. So if you were to take a plant root and blow it up, this is what you might see. So here we have our plant root, that long, thin stripe that's going across the screen. And then on top of it, you have what looks like a tree. And this is actually the mycorrhizal fungi. That's just where we get more into what that symbiotic relationship is between the plant root and the fungus. So the fungus needs a surface to live on. It doesn't live in a freeform space. So the plant root provides that surface. And the fungus will actually form almost a almost inside of the plant root, it'll start and it'll grow out like a tree. And it forms this arboscule. So what that tree structure looks like is actually the arboscule of the fungus and the fungus roots itself. So it lives on the root and it branches out. So that's how the fungus is benefited by the plant. The plant provides that surface to live on. And the root gets benefits by a bunch of different things that we'll touch on just a second. Basically, how does it help my garden? So you have this symbiotic relationship. So the fungus is growing on and through the root. And that increases the surface area of the plant root. And that allows for more nutrition, more nutrients to be used by the plant. So your fungus gets a place to live. And the plant gets increased benefits from that fungus living on it through that increased surface area. So, for example, if on the left hand side of the photo, you have no colonization from this fungus. And on the right side, you have your fungal colonization. So the hyphal network or that root like network of the fungus is going to extend past a phosphorous depletion or phosphate depletion zone. So on that photo, that's that gray area kind of surrounding the plant root. That's the phosphate depletion zone. And those mycorrhizal roots will extend out and past that zone and lead to an increased intake of different nutrients. So those nutrients often include nitrogen and zinc and phosphate, as well as phosphorus. So those are our three main nutrients plus a micronutrient. So they have that increased nutrient uptake. So with that, you get more foliar growth. So your plants are getting bigger and bushier and they can perhaps produce more depending on the plant. You also get increased benefits such as increased resistance to foliar pathogens. So you're not going to have as many like leaf spot diseases or insect attacks might be minimized depending on, you know, what's going on. There's also an increase in drought tolerance and a increase in resistance to root pathogens such as root rot or other pathogens that impact the root. So you all over have these really great benefits going towards your plants. There's also an increased salt tolerance, which is really important in certain parts of our state where we have issues in salinity. So the master gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco counties, they did a really cool experiment and you can Google it. I think they called it the effects of mycorrhizal fungi inoculums on vegetables, master gardeners, and you could probably find it. But essentially what they did is they took some plants and they planted in their garden and inoculated. So there was an introduction to the fungus plants and then some that were not inoculated. So they didn't do anything to them. They planted them just as they came in the seed packet as described by the seed packet. What they found was there was an increase in foliar growth in the height of most of their plants with the exception of spinach, which I'm curious how their spinach shrunk an inch between May and June. But most of the plants had an increase growth or more growth on the inoculated plants rather than the non inoculated plants. And the study goes on to say that in September they measured some of their plants again and they found that the plants such as the cardoon was eight feet in September on the inoculated plant and only four feet for the non inoculated plant. It was similar results showing up in the Japanese chrysanthemum. The only plant that did not show really any benefits was the strawberry spinach. So besides foliar growth, drought resistance, increased nutrients, all these great things. There's also increased soil aggregation. So those fine roots that the fungus has growing on the plant roots breaks up those soil aggregates, which are the building blocks of soil and leads to a looser, more fluffy soil over time. So you're getting that natural tillage per se. There's also a decrease in weed existence or weed incidence. And I wasn't able to find why that happens. Just that in a bunch of different studies, there's a shown that plants that have that relationship with the fungus also have less weeds than crops that were grown without a relationship to that fungus. So all around really great relationships between plants and this fungus increasing benefits to our garden. So how do I get this in my garden? Only this sounds great. What do I do to get it here? Well, you could just go out and buy some know your source though, try to buy from someplace reputable. So look at your local garden store or an online garden store. I saw some online garden stores such as Gurney's or other ones sometimes have it as an organic process that they can buy and add it. But as you can see from my very simple Google search, you can also get it from Amazon or Home Depot, Walmart. There's a bunch of different places that you can get it from. But try to make sure that you get something reputable. And that actually is the micro risel fungal spores and inoculations for your garden. So there's two types of inoculations that you can buy. You can do a soil inoculation, which is like what is displayed on my screen, where you would just sprinkle it into the soil added into the soil, or you can buy your seeds already inoculated with the fungus. This is more common when you're buying rootstock of trees. A lot of times reputable nurseries will inoculate the fungus into the rootstock in order to have increased growth and better survival rates for those trees. And these are just really great ways to boost your garden soil, especially in elevated beds where there's no connection to the native soil. There's a space between the native soil and the ground that we walk on and the soil that you're gardening in. So this could be a way to introduce natural native microorganisms into your soil. But you don't have to go out and buy anything. You can do it at your home or just a little labor. So ways that you can increase it in your soil naturally is to cultivate a habitat for them. So that means decreasing your tillage. Like I said at the beginning, you're going to have to minimize the means plant or fungus root. So if you're increasing your tillage, then you're breaking up those roots and they're having to reform over and over and over again. Whereas if you were to decrease your tillage, those roots have the chance to continue to grow and survive. Increasing organic matter increases a food source and nutrients for your plants to continue to grow and form those relationships. This particular organ, the micro-rysal fungi is advantageous. It's going to go out looking for whatever is available. So if there's too much of one nutrient in your soil, then it's not going to colonize on your plant roots. So avoiding excessive fertilizer, making sure that you're not over adding anything, planting diverse crops, diverse habitats means that there's going to be more micro-organisms in general. But mainly that micro-rysal fungi in your plants and that can look like crop rotation or intercropping your plants. So if you have like tomatoes next to your beans and you just alternate tomato bean, tomato bean or something like that, or like the four sisters gardening method where you have the corn and the squash and the beans all together with sunflowers around. So those are different ways that you can incorporate diversity into your garden to bring in those fungus and then obviously it's a fungus. Avoid fungicides as they will kill it. Use the right hose. So I said at the beginning this particular relationship has exists in 70 percent. So that means there's 30 percent of plant species that it doesn't exist in. So the three main ones that we might grow in our garden are the brassy ACA, which is your broccoli, cabbage, mustard, your chinopod ACA, which is spinach, shard, and beets. And that's actually a subfamily of the amaranthia ACA and the karyophyll ACA, which is carnations and baby breasts and some flowers. So most of those plants in those families have a low host potential, meaning the fungus is less likely to develop on those plants. But some species within these are still considered to be hosts. So as a general statement, they're called non-host families, though sometimes you might find it. But this could be why in that Master Gardener, the strawberry spinach didn't really grow as well. It's because it was a non-host. So making sure that you're using a great host, corn is a huge host for this fungus. Incorporating diverse plantings, reducing tillage, these are all really great ways to bring these beneficial fungus into your garden and your lives. So if you have any questions that you think of later, here's my contact information, but other than that, Tom, how'd I do? Okay, we learned a lot and we've got a couple questions already. One is about, like, you recommended these products that you buy this fungi. Now, how do I know that that fungi is still alive in the bag? Like, maybe got frozen or burned out? That's a really great question. That's one of those things where you're just going to have to research the product and see how it was brought in and see what's going on. Sometimes they dehydrate it or we'll do something like that so that you're putting it in and then adding water and it comes back alive or it's in a dormant phase or something like that. So I would regularly recommend researching the product and buying from a reputable company. Okay, now you mentioned how organic matter can help. Is this a good time to add organic matter to a garden soil or is fall a better time? I mean, I mean, I'm very much like anytime's a great time to add organic matter. I'm going to make sure it's so good for the soil, you know, whatever. I can't see it really being too useful to add it in the fall because it'll just get covered in snow and not going to be able to break down as much, especially in our North Dakota winters. I guess it depends on when it fall, if it's early fall it's probably fine and has that time to break in. But I would say spring now would be a good time to go ahead and add it in if you have some available. Sometimes fall is easier if you're composting all season long and your compost isn't ready until fall then add it in fall. Okay, how about those photos that you showed of those, for lack of a better were those trees that were growing on them? Were those endo or ecto mycorrhizal fungi? I believe, I'd have to go back and look, but I believe those are ecto arbascular mycorrhizal fungi. Okay, what Darren doesn't make anyhow? I never heard of either one of them. Um, I mean they're just... What's ecto mean anyhow? Ash, now you're asking me the question. Don't worry, this is like trivia. My biggest thing is just focus on their arbascular mycorrhizal fungi. There's a bunch of different names and terms and things going on and then you get into the fungal species because arbascular mycorrhizal fungi is just a classification of a different bunch of fungal species. So it can get really complicated really quick. If they have these really specific questions, I would love to have that conversation with them. Just shoot me an email or give me a phone call and I can get the really great answers in depth if they want. All right, how about are there any trees and landscapes that make a good host for this fungi? A lot of trees, a lot of landscapes. Trees, forests and trees have the most research with this fungus and I believe that's where it was first discovered was in these forests as a form of communication. There's a bunch of really interesting articles about trees speaking to each other through this fungal network. So yeah, trees are great. We love trees for this fungus. Okay, how do you know if your soil in the garden or nature has this type of fungi already? Maybe we don't need to add it anymore. Yeah, I mean there's a fault that it already exists within your plants. You never know. I mean that picture was blown up really large so there's certain soil tests that you can do to test for the presence of microorganisms and without a really high powered microscope it's almost impossible to determine if you actually have that specific one but you could do some soil tests. I don't think any of the NDSU soil tests cover that one. You have to like go out and pay some good money to get those soil tests done. How about is compost a good inoculant for this type of fungi? This is a great organic matter. Very cool. Love organic matter. Okay, I bought a bag of this stuff. How much how much do I need to add to my raised bed? I would read what the package says. Yeah, read the label. That's a good answer. That's always a good answer. Always a good start. And then if it doesn't really say contact your local extension agent. Okay, you know uh when you have bean and pea seeds that's what I see sometimes in kettles. They offer inoculate for beans and pea seeds. Is that uh unless but when you just naturally buy a bean or pea seed just as is that does not have the inoculate. Correct? No. Um if you're talking about like when you get your bean or your peas and they're pink. Um that's or how about just I but I'm at the I'm at the garden center now. I just bought a packet of bean seeds. Is that inoculated? Probably not unless it says it's inoculated. I would assume it's not. And of course that pink stuff that's a likely a fungicide treatment. Yeah that's a yeah fungicide pesticide treatment. And fungicide and this uh Michael Reiser fungi, dear or not, that's not a good combination, right? No, I mean it's like it's like putting 2-4-D on your lettuce. It's not really good. Not a good idea. Okay um this person has mushrooms growing on their topiary tree that they started last summer. If that mushrooms are growing on a tree is that how do I know if that's a good fungi? You know that's a really great question. It kind of depends. It could be a sign depending on the mushroom or the fungus that's growing on there. It could be a sign that your tree is decaying. So that would be a really great thing to take a picture of and send it to your local extension agent and ask like what's going on there. Um Michael Reisle fungi does not have many fruiting bodies and fruiting bodies are what we see when we think of mushrooms. They're little you know like a little mushroom. Morales are an example of our Michael Reisle fungi fruiting body but for the most part they don't really have something that you can see on top of the soil. Okay so we're back at the garden center and now we bought garden soil. Does that have micro fungi, Michael Reisle fungi in it? Okay did you buy like garden soil that has soil particles in it like a sand cell or clay or did you buy something that has um a sterilized soil mix which is going to be more like your peat moss with fertilizer or coconut quark with a bunch of different additives in it because if it's a sterilized mix it most definitely does not because it's sterilized. There's nothing growing in it. If it's a top soil it could have just about anything in it. We can't say for sure. Okay and it's hard to buy sterile soil because even like that potting soil mix that is not sterile. That's not sterilized generally speaking. It won't say sterile on the package. If it's a soilless mix that could be sterile. Okay how about we we're back to that ecto-endo controversy we started. We've got a scientist here giving us some real ecto-mf whatever that mf stands. Macarizal fungi originates from the epidermis of the root. Endo-macarizal fungi invades into the cortex so going from the outside and once from the inside. Yeah ecto is out endo is in. There you go. I told you more than that. That's more than you want to know. How about okay now talk about the the delicate balance between fertilizing with a chemical fertilizer and also organic matter. Now you said excessive fertilizer will hurt this fungi but how about do you have any general recommendations about when do we fertilize a garden after we add organic matter? How do we decide if we should fertilize the garden? You know Tom I think a really great thing to do is to take a soil sample and send it off to the soil lab get your soil tested see what's going on in there and if you're looking at like your fertile or like as organic matter as a fertilizer you can take a sample like of a compost and you just take your compost and you can send that off and just let them know hey this is going to be like 100% organic matter but what are my nutrient contents in this? When we're talking about microorganisms and excessive fertilization most of the time we're talking about the three main nutrients which is your nitrogen phosphorus and potassium. So if you're getting a sample of your compost and you're sending it off and you're just curious okay what's my NPK then you're going to get that answer and you're going to know exactly how much you're adding on top of your garden soil. So if you have added let's say you added your compost one year and two years later you do an sample of your soil and your garden as a whole that would be a good time to see do I need to add any more additional inorganic fertilizers to help really supplement it or can I add some more of my compost or a bunch of different things that you can do but I always recommend getting a soil test to see where are you starting at before you add anything. Okay that's a good suggestion how about you mentioned decreased tillage helps the soil now when you talk about tillage are you talking like a rotor tiller how about if I just hoe is that okay if I just use a hoe? For the most part I am talking about like a rotor tiller I think it's almost impossible to do any sort of gardening without any disturbance to the soil I don't know of a method where you can't oh no Tom maybe you know one about how you or like a soil or a gardening method without disturbing the soil at all but it's about there is a one because you gotta plant a seed for one you know yeah you gotta poke I mean there's ways you just want to minimize the destructive process yeah I hoe my garden um typically you're not wanting to go too far down and with the hoe you're not going that far down the rotor tiller you're going a little bit further rotor tiller it's just you know that's like that's pretty powerful that's a lot of blades going there that's a lot of that's a lot of destruction that's why we kind of like it because it really no no weeds can survive it and we can't see the damage to the the mycorrhiza so okay how about pre-emergent herbicides does that have an effect on this type of uh mycorrhiza pre-emergent herbicide like uh preen yeah I was thinking like preen or crabgrass don't use crabgrass oh we're not doing that um I mean I wouldn't think so you're just like pre-emergence is keeping the plant from germinating and emerging so if anything it's decreasing the amount of hosts that the mycorrhizal fungi has to latch on to so I mean that's kind of one of those give and takes I would use it in my yard but I don't know if I would use it in my garden kind of one of those things okay okay it says here um you can buy a pack that you put an inoculate in the garden when you plant oh so that's what that's that's those are the products you were showing yeah that's that soil you just spread it into your garden and before you plant yeah this person has a pro mix that starts seeds indoors it contains the mf and this person plants puts the transplants all over the garden is this like another way that we're adding mf to the soil yeah because it would be inoculated onto the plant root whenever um you know assuming that nature works correctly um it would be inoculated onto the plant root and then you would be taking that transfer and putting it into your garden so you would be introducing it to your garden through that so that's similar to like when the forest or nursery has it inoculated onto the tree root and you put it and it's still there it's still alive it's just in a different location I hadn't heard of it in the sea starting though that's really interesting that's pro mix yeah so that's a commercial mix there there you go so I think you're on to something here Emily you know you're not a lone wolf just crying mf mf or you know there's micro rice a lot of it so it's getting to be a hot topic yeah the words out words words getting out yeah slowly but surely there you go now this person used cardboard top with straw as a mulch on their vegetable garden now they just heard that cardboard has toxins so is this harming the quality of their garden soil should they remove that cardboard I'm not I haven't heard anything about cardboard and fox's tongue have you no I generally don't think paper products has unless there's like a coating on it a certain type of coating but it's just paper and sometimes we heard about the old newspaper mulching too but they have soy based inks now so I think this person's probably gonna be okay I think you're fine I mean if it's like I'm guessing like that shiny cardboard right it has a plastic on it and I wouldn't use that in my garden but I mean I'm thinking like the u-haul boxes where you go and they're just a box but where'd you get your song packages right I don't think they have special coatings on oh I don't think they do yeah you know the one thing about all this is what's the best thing you give your garden okay is it a bag of micro riso fungi I would say no the best thing to give your garden is your shadow I mean spend time in your garden look at your plants like how's your strawberry spinach doing if you ever grow that but just how's your plants doing like are they are they kind of pale okay now we now we got to start thinking about adding something to our soil but if they're doing fine if we're spending our shadow out there and we see everything's fine then that's a good thing you got to spend time in your garden yeah so micro riso fungi exists in our soils naturally it's just cultivating your habitat for them and that's where that diversity low tillage those sorts of methods come in so you're gonna increase that habitat it's the same concept that we use with our pollinators just underground right and like you said stay away from the fun decides if you can and like this person has questions so ideally in a healthy garden the micro riso fungi can be self sufficient yep okay that's our goal that is the that's the goal is we want to have our microbes that's as sufficient like I said at the beginning there's a billion in a teaspoon there's so many that we still haven't looked into and it's a really interesting field of study and you have your micro riso fungi who has great PR and you have your riso bacteria that also has great PR and then you have all these other species of fungus and microorganisms that we just don't know of yet so how much can we add inoculants to our potted plants sure how about yeah how about non micro riso fungi like mushrooms do they provide a benefit for a garden all right like growing your own mushrooms I've seen a lot of these grow your own mushroom kits where it's like a block of sawdust with the spores inoculated into the sawdust and you mist and you get to harvest your own mushrooms I mean mushrooms are great fungus is great because it's going to break down decomposing matter and they have their hyphae which is their root that goes underneath the soil and extends for it's very vast network so it would still break up the soil aggregates and decompose stuff that I guess I'm not really understanding where they're wanting to go with it yeah I kind of I mean there's like we just talked about bees and there's 4 000 species of bees I mean how many species of fungi are out there like uncountable like so like you know there's so many like I mean would I recommend spreading fusarium you know that kind of stuff are or botrytis in the garden no I would not do that gray mold or anything like that or early blight alternate area no slime molds yeah well they're kind of harmless but yeah you're right they're pretty girl-sucking that's right but um yeah but I guess you're talking about just the big picture uh yeah there are a lot of beneficial fungi out there that's kind of like the big picture there it's not all evil and so we kind of it's kind of like the art of gardening you know want to promote the positive the beneficial fungi and repel the harmful fungi how about that any last words Emily um I thought I saw somebody ask for my contact information so I'll just give them my email and it's just going to be Emily E-M-I-O-Y dot how H-O-W S-N-D-S-U dot E-D-O that's right and Emily's horticulture educator it's on her last slide of her presentation and she's up in my not so she can she can always be reached via email or phone so Emily thanks for that that was very fascinating you're on the cutting edge here I think I only try to sounds good okay everybody um okay that's it for tonight and that's it for this year's spring fever garden forums and all I can say is I hope you have a a great growing season and if you ever do have any questions in the summer please reach out to us at North Dakota State University Extension we're there to help you and when you have a timely question like a timely issue like something's going wrong with that zucchini reach out to us and we'll be right there to give you to help you out so with that I wish everybody a good night and hope you all have a happy spring thank you everybody