Mycorrhizal Fungi: The Amazing Underground Secret to a Better Garden

A white fungal network called hyphae, not plant roots, is the principal structure for the uptake of many important nutrients in the plant kingdom.
A white fungal network called hyphae, not plant roots, is the principal structure for the uptake of many important nutrients in the plant kingdom.

Years ago, before the Internet, Mother Earth News magazine was my main source of gardening information. They have decades of free articles online, which in my opinion is a remarkable treasure trove. The following article is just a sample.

“Nurture the ancient, symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plants’ roots for increased garden harvests and healthier soil.

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Miracle Soil Building Properties of Vetiver Grass

This is almost too good to be true. Keep reading if you want to learn how vetiver is a true miracle plant. What do you do when you have hard pan clay soil like we do? We dug large tree holes for our fruit trees, but at some point the roots need to penetrate the surrounding clay soil in order for the tree to grow to maturity.

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Prepare for Higher Food Prices

The continuing drought in California is contributing to higher food prices. As explained in this Zero Hedge article the drought is expected to get much worse. It could even turn into drought of epic proportions according to some new scientific studies. This is serious stuff. California provides 80-95% of many fruits and vegetables. It’s time to prepare.

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Restoring Degraded Land

Dry pinyon-juniper ranch land like this is a perfect candidate for land restoration projects as we explain in this blog post.
Dry pinyon-juniper ranch land like this is a perfect candidate for land restoration projects as we explain in this blog post.

Urban areas have strict building codes that often make it difficult and costly to build with natural materials. Good rural land is expensive and hard to come by. So where can you live? Pinyon-juniper scrub land is very abundant, cheap and worth considering.

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Transition Forest Gardens

Deforestation is actively destroying about 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forest every year. The biggest, most valuable trees are logged for timber. Often the smaller, less valuable trees are left remaining… for a while. Then farmers come along and clear the land for field crops such as soybeans, corn and cassava, because the remaining scrub forest doesn’t have much commercial value. But what if the deforestation process stopped after the large trees were cut? You could use the smaller remaining trees to help regrow a forest more valuable than timber – a food forest that continually produces abundant food indefinitely for generations to come without need for cultivation, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

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