Page 17 - FEB2020

Agrichemist’s solutions

FUNGI IN THE GARDEN
It doesn’t matter if you’re not a death-defying
experimenter, mushrooms in the garden are a good
thing, even if they don’t end up on your plate.

Fungi indicates a healthy soil, as it needs decaying organic
matter to feed on. And a soil rich in organic matter, is also rich in
nutrients that plants can take up. Fungi helps in this process by converting decomposing
plant material into humus, thereby fertilizing your garden. Every year, rainfall stimulates
fungal mycelia, perennial underground masses of fungal threads, to start sending up
their fruiting bodies, like mushrooms and truffles. And Kalahari truffles are a prized
delicacy in Botswana.
Some fungi are considered plant pathogens, causing root rots, and other maladies, but
ninety-two percent of all plant families have relationships with fungi, via the roots. Our
forest trees could not survive without their fungal myccorhizal partners. The woody
plants provide the mushrooms with sugars, and the mushrooms allow minerals to be in a
form available to the plants.
You can actually buy fungal applications for just this purpose, to help trees flourish,
however I prefer using the already existing fungi present in the soil, and just keep feeding
it with organic matter which helps to enrich my soil. Text & photos S.C

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