When I first discovered that horse manure (really stable bedding mixed with manure) was available from the local stables maintained by the park police, I went on a binge bringing the stuff into the garden. I tried it on all sorts of things. I planted a few bulbs of Iris histrio aintabensis in it – directly into a shovel full of it, without any admixture of soil or anything else. Those iris really went to town – they not only bloomed but they provided dozens and dozens of fat little bulbs when I dug them. When I ran out of manure and those same plants were moved into regular soil, the faded away within a year or two. Another year I did something so counter-intuitive that the results amazed even me. I have this hypothesis that fungi in the soil are very aggressive to one another. I decided that if I could establish a non-pathogenic fungus in the soil, bulbs which are often victims of pathogenic fungi would be protected. To test this hypothesis, I used the horse manure. I noticed that if I kept it in plastic bags, it soon developed a very pleasant mushroomy odor. I wasn’t aware that any of the Agaricus fungi were pathogens of live plants, so I decided to store some tulip bulbs in this mushroomy horse manure during the summer. I put a handful of tulip bulbs into a plastic bag full of the mushroomy horse manure/stable bedding. The plastic bags were clear plastic, and during the summer I could see that the fungal mycelium was filling the bag. Every once and a while I would open a bag and take a tulip bulb out to check it. They were always fine. When fall came, I took out all the tulip bulbs and looked them over. They seemed fine. Except for the peculiar surface texture they had – rough, not smooth like dry bulbs – they were fine. They were also a bit warm – the stable bedding was evidently still decomposing a bit, although not enough to harm the bulbs. There was one other difference: the tulip bulbs were not as heavy as comparably-sized bulbs stored in conventional ways. The fungus was apparently monopolizing the moisture. I like to tell this story to beginning gardeners, the sort who freak every time they see any evidence of fungi. The point I try to make is that only some fungi are pathogens; most are not. The other point is the concept of host specificity: even pathogenic fungi have specific hosts. They are not wild cards which will destroy everything they touch. Fungi are everywhere, and we’re still here, right? Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7, where it's warm right now and the scent of magnolias fills the garden. My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/