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One of the most valuable uses for mycorrhizal inoculants is to allow plants to grow in inhospitable soil - restoration of mine tailings, freeway landscape plantings, bad pH situations, no-topsoil urban lawn areas, etc. In such conditions, a plant with mycorrhizal fungi on its root system can thrive in soil that would usually mean death for plants on their own. (In the worst situations, the fungi may have to be established on the roots in a nursery - being given a head start before being set out.) Also, it seems likely that giving farmers the means to produce good yields...

So there's this patch of soil that's been farmed for decades - pretty much like all the other crop land in the county. For centuries, it was native grassland with lush growth year after year, with no added fertilizer (other than maybe some buffalo dung now and then). And then the sod busters came with their plows. Again, the "virgin soil" was very productive with no added fertilizer. A few farms had cow manure available, but supplies were usually limited. And then came the big change. Enterprising chemical corporations, looking for a new market after World War II, developed NPK...

Mycorrhizal fungi benefit their host plants in many ways - protecting roots from soil pathogens and diseases, helping build up populations of nutrient-processing bacteria, fluffing up hard-packed clay, as well as performing many other valuable underground functions. The best-known functions are the seeking out of nutrients and moisture from the soil surrounding a plant, thereby allowing growers to use less fertilizer and irrigation water. This is a complex process and involves the fungi linking together different plant root systems into an underground network - sort of an underground spider web arrangement on a huge scale. A healthy undisturbed soil will...

Summer is a good time for me. The crush of planting season orders has slowed down, and my vegetable garden can be given more attention. I have five large in-ground beds in my greenhouse. One is permanently devoted to strawberries, leaving four available each summer for optional crops. At our elevation (4300 feet) in Central Oregon's high desert, we often get hard frosts in July and August so a greenhouse is a must if you want tender crops. And I do. Typically, I devote two beds to corn and two to tomatoes, with bush beans and a couple zucchinis squeezed...

I see that a study of 43 different crops found that many of today's fruits and vegetables do not have the same nutritional content as 50 years ago. For those of us who grow our own, the flavor gap between supermarket produce and that from our garden seems to have widened, especially when comparing heirloom varieties to the latest "improved" hybrids. However, the decline in nutrient content is also something worth noting. Researchers led by Dr. Donald Davis, a bio-chemistry professor at the University of Texas at Austin, compared chemical analyses by the USDA from 1950 and 1999 to see...