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Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on July 26, 2013 at 8:12am

Nope. No mycorrhizal fungi were inoculated. Just bacteria. Actually, a blend of live bacteria, dead bacteria, latent bacteria, and their exudates...but no fungi.

Comment by Alex Veidel on July 26, 2013 at 7:21am

Well, it's obviously getting results. Are those microbes mycorrhizal fungi?

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on July 26, 2013 at 1:42am

Thanks Alex :) Yeah, these have grown quite a bit larger than I expected. (They've not been anywhere near as prolific out in the dirt garden). I've been learning a lot from a 'rocket scientist' friend (no really, she has a PhD in microbiology and is doing some really cool work in her field) about using very specific beneficial microbes (isolated from soil samples and then cultured) to do some interesting things for plants. I've been seeing some really neat stuff in some of the side by sides I've been doing.

Check this out, these are two of my cucumbers. One has been innoculated and treated to 'Colonel Sanders Special Blend of 6 Targeted Bacterial Strains', the other has not. (All other environmental conditions/nutrients were the same). 

 Pretty neat huh?   Check out the difference in leafy green mass...

 So yes, some things are growing a bit bigger on the Jovanovic farm this year 

Living here has always meant 'doing more with less', and I feel that I've got a pretty good handle on the 'plant essential element input' side of things... where those elements come from (cheap to free local/sustainable sources and whatnot), their roles and the chemistry behind them...So this year I've sort of been exploring how plants can better utilize what (scant) essential elements are available in a low density system. A large part of that efficacy has to do with certain microbes. Turns out efficacy is just the 'tip of the microbial iceberg'. It's pretty cool stuff once you kinda get into it, amazing really. 

Comment by Alex Veidel on July 25, 2013 at 8:08am

Hmm, your tomatoes are a tad larger than mine ;)