mycorrhizal fungi

[new gardener 1052]

Good evening all. do you really need this mycorrhizal fungi on planting fruit trees?

Regards ng.

[Thelma Sanders]

I use it on any trees/bushes I'm planting in poor soil - to me, it does seem to help them establish quickly.

[boundtothesoil]

Good evening all. do you really need this mycorrhizal fungi on planting fruit trees?

Regards ng.

Personally I wouldn't buy this kind of product. Rather, I'd assume that relevant fungal species were likely to be present in the soil anyway. Hence, I'd let any mycorrhizal associations develop naturally.

[Alison]

I've never used it

[noviceveggrower]

I planted a few fruit trees last year and didn't use it. They seem ok this year with plenty of leaves and loads of blossom.

[chrisdb]

As others have said, associations with fungi are very helpful for the tree both for nutrient collection and to protect the roots from harmful fungi, but in most soils will happen naturally over time anyway. The main reason to use it is that it may help with establishment early in the tree's life. Personally I do use it because it's cheap per tree, so I figure that I might as well.

One issue if you want to use them is that they don't react well to heavy doses of artificial fertiliser or to fungicides (obviously). Which is pretty much the same as with other soil life actually. Flooding the soil with unnatural high levels of nutrients disrupts the normally cycles and kills off a lot of beneficial soil life which were previously recycling the existing nutrients and stopping them leaching from the soil. So basically, if you're not going to garden semi-organically then its probably not worth it.