Inoculating bulbs?

Travis O enoster@hotmail.com
Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:09:20 PST
Hi,

I've been reading 'Teaming with Microbes' by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis (Timber Press 2010) and it has got my imagination going. Most gardeners are familiar with or have at least heard of the ability of leguminous plants to "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form plants can use, a result of a fungal symbiosis. The book describes in detail the complex microscopic ecosystems that inhabit healthy soil and interact, in many cases symbiotically and beneficially, with (according to the book) 90% of all plants on Earth.

Now it seems that the common practice amongst this group, and many other specialized plant groups, is to use completely sterilized soil (or "medium"). Could there be a benefit to inoculating our bulb seed, or perhaps the dormant bulbs themselves, as one may do with food crops?

To me, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that many wild bulb populations have some sort of positive relationship to the microfauna in the soil they share. Keeping with this line of reasoning, I wonder if some of the "difficult" bulbous species out there, unknown in cultivation, may only need the correct fungal association (or bacterial, or whatever) to survive in cultivation? Or could using beneficial bacteria/fungi to inoculate our current bulbs improve their vigor, or other unforeseen benefits?

Is there any research out there on this?

Travis Owen
Rogue River, OR

http://www.amateuranthecologist.com/
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/




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