If you’ve read through ONfungi’s ruminations regarding carbon sequestration you’ll have noticed that we think its happening as we restore soils but we don’t think it works the way some folks were hoping. Pretty early on in our research we realized that for carbon sequestration in soil to work you needed to renew the soil on an ongoing basis. So things like cover cropping, no till, our ONfdc may be more than useful but actually essential to carbon sequestration in soil. Recently Biocycle.net’s Sally Brown looked at some of the new technology being applied to the issue and came to the same conclusion we did. If you want to store…
-
-
Spring 2022 garden upgrades start now
New for spring 2022 are more, more and even more for gardeners and soil regeneration citizen scientists ONfungi will be opening 5 of Scott the wizard Hortop’s bioreactors (filled in the fall of 2020), a record for ONfungi, and an FDC (fungal dominant compost) bonanza allowing: Alberto Suarez of Nature’s Apprentice Farm will be doing multiple controlled trials of the FDC on selected vegetable plantings; as well as on small plots of wheat and oats. ONfungi will be working with Cliff Neudorf and the South Lanark Community Garden to supply FDC for garden and student experiments, as well as start their first bioreactor. Mark MacKenzie will be doing 5 lawn…
-
How to use our own biological diversity to replenish poor quality soils
ONfungi is an organic compost which contains many varieties and strains of Arbuscular Mychorrizae (AM). In poor quality soil, there is often a lack of micro biomass. This means that critical fungi or bacteria strains intended to ensure a diverse balance within the soil is disturbed, and remediation is needed. By adding spores of robust and healthy fungi from our own ecosystems, the risk of pathogenic fungi attacking plants becomes lower and lower. If symbiotic AM fungi are available to colonize the roots of plants, there is a far less chance of an infection from a pathogenic variety, as there are less resources available to support it. A similar concept…
-
Endo vs Ecto fungi, which one reigns supreme?
There are two primary types of mycorrhizal fungi, endo and ecto, both are mycelium but associate with different types of plants while performing similar functions. Endomycorrhizae (or Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizae) are symbiotically associated with about 90% of the plant kingdom. This coevolution began 350–460 million years ago and allowed vascular plants to begin growing on land. Endomycorrhizae physically penetrate plant roots and create an intercellular attachment in the form of branched structures called arbuscules. Arbuscules within root cells provide an extensive surface area for the exchange of nutrients such as glucose or nitrogen through the cell membrane. Mycelia from endomycorrhizae extend from the plant roots into the surrounding soil, gathering…
