Mycorrhizal Banks to Enhance Vegetable Yield and Reduce Water Quality Impairment by Mitigating Excessive Soil Phosphorus
at Diggers' Mirth Farm in the Intervale, Burlington VT
2021-2023
Project Description
YEAR 1 OBJECTIVES
- Determine if wild inoculum from nearby wild buffers can improve phosphorus uptake in parsley planted in polyculture covercrop
- Discern if mycorrhizal communities differ between the N (mostly herbaceous plants & shrubs) & S (mostly trees & garlic mustard) wild buffers in phosphorus transfer & in mycorrhizal populations
- Develop accessible protocols for farmers to grow viable wild mycorrhizal inoculum, endemic to their field edges
Our second field season started. Homegrown inoculant was gifted to Diggers' Mirth to apply. Phase 2 of testing the endemic inoculum vs commercial vs none in the field is growing in the field! Read about our findings from year 1 here. Check out our Final Report! Here is a Youtube video about growing endemic mycorrhizae.
Resources
Photos
Photos from 2022 field season: field research design, edge of field bank, grown out field bank edges with radish strips to separate plots, covercrop field banks inoculated & uninoculated before scything with a radish strip, after covercrops were scythed and parsley planted, Greenhouse Inoculum growing design, Luca setting up pot cultures, week 2 pot culture growth, mycorrhizal root dying for colonization analysis, wild , & mycorrhizal spores we were able to extract from the soil & an arbuscule under 10x microscope lens.
