well sorry to bum you out, but thats how i feel.
well sorry to bum you out, but thats how i feel.
J.Berry I saw that you were using MYKOS - mentioned earlier in thread. I haven't tried it yet, but I met some reps from the company the other night in Marin at a showcase at the Sloat Garden Center. They seemed highly-knowledgeable and gave me an info packet with loads of info. I thought I'd post the company story that they provided and see what others thought.
Good stuff it sounds like?
RTI: Nature-Inspired, Science-Driven
Deforestation
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), deforestation may account for up to a third of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions.[1] One company has taken up the call of restoring our forests - Reforestation Technologies International. RTIs fertilizers have helped establish over a quarter billion seedlings, combating the negative effects of global deforestation.
Polluting Fertilizers
While designing highly effective and environmentally-friendly plant food for forest restoration has been a step in the right direction, RTI has been inspired to find other ways to improve horticultural aids that can maximize plant and environmental health. Farmers and home gardeners commonly use fertilizers to ensure that plants receive the right levels of vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, average commercial fertilizers are creating a mess of problems. The fertilizer life-cycle accounts for 2 to 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.[3] This is non-trivial to be sure, especially considering that fertilizer manufacturing produces methane - a greenhouse gas 20x more harmful than carbon dioxide.[4]
In addition to releasing greenhouse gases while being manufactured, fertilizer run-off is damaging our oceans and lakes. Losing 85-95% of a fertilizer is both highly inefficient for the grower and damaging to the environment, yet almost all fertilizers have such poorly designed nutrient-delivery systems. Only about 10% of conventional fertilizer actually helps plants grow, the rest is washed through the soil and eventually filters into waterways. There, the fertilizer does what it is supposed to do it helps plants grow. Unfortunately, that leads to algae colonies blooming across oceans and lakes, killing fish and marine mammals by removing oxygen from the water. RTI has designed organic fertilizers that are wrapped in a biodegradable coating which lose less than 1% of nitrogen to run-off [2]. Instead of contaminating rivers, streams, and oceans, RTI fertilizers are slowly released to plants to provide 100% nutrient support.
Guided by Nature
Simply creating a better fertilizer was never RTI's goal. Instead RTI is inspired by biomimicry - researching soil and plant ecology to understand how a nature-designed system maximizes yield without creating negative side-effects. Rather than relying on heavy water and fertilization, RTI has sought to understand how plants in natural settings thrive without human cultivation.These investigations have led RTI's research team to the complex web of interrelated soil microorganisms that sustain plants through droughts, make soil and air nutrients available to plants, and protect their hosts from invaders.
One of the most important of these organisms is mycorrhizae, a soil fungus that is the star quarterback of the soil microbe team. Plants have been depending on mycorrhizae for a long time. In fact, this relationship has been developing over the last 450 million years! Evidence indicates plants may even never have left the water 450 million years ago without the assistance of mycorrhizae.[5]
So how does mycorrhiza work? Under the ground, microscopic fungal filaments attach to a plant's roots and then stretch outwards into the soil, creating a huge extended roots network. These fungal fibers are 60x skinnier than plant roots and stretch up to 100x further into the soil, and they can optimize nutrient collection far better than the plant can by itself. In addition to being skinny enough to reach into tiny crevices, mycorrhizae more efficiently produces the special enzymes needed to dissolve locked-up nutrients, such as phosphorus, resulting in a far greater collection of vitamins and minerals. Finally, mycorrhizae help strengthen the plant and protect it from invaders such as white root rot and other soil diseases. The fungal filaments which reach out and mine the soil, called hyphae, actually release natural disease-suppressing phenols.
After studying the benefits of mycorrhizae to plants, RTI paired with world-renowned research scientists in Brazil and the United States such as Dr. Robert Linderman to select the species of mycorrhizae that most effectively increased plant health. From this collaboration came Mykos, a mycorrhizal product which has surpassed our wildest hopes. The last 4 World Record Largest Pumpkins were all grown using Mykos! This is a bigger deal than it may first appear (if you'll pardon the pun), as pumpkins grow larger than any other fruit or vegetable. Mykos' benefits hardly stop with pumpkins, though. RTI's mycorrhizae was also used to grow the World's Second Largest Tomato (Nick Harp), and the World's Largest Squash (John Vincent & Brian McGill). In addition to growing larger plants, Mykos grows healthier plants that are more delicious and nutritious.
After seeing Mykos transform so many farms and gardens, RTI has sought to create more products that can help create the perfect soil environment for your plants. Recently, RTI cultivated another soil microbe called Azospirillum brasilense. We just call it Azos. Plants need nitrogen to be lush and healthy. The good news? The atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen. The bad news? Plants are unable to absorb nitrogen directly from the air. Here is where Azos comes in. This tiny bacterium comes from the Amazon rainforest, where plants use it to convert atmospheric nitrogen into plant nitrogen. In addition, Azos releases Indole-3-Acetic-Acid (IAA), a hormone that naturally stimulates plant growth. [7] The results of using Azos can be seen in places such as the City of Indian Wells, CA, where the use of Azos in conjunction with the symbiotic help of Mykos, has saved the city $38,000 in fertilizer and 6.5 million gallons of water over the last 18 months. That doesnt include the amount saved on labor-costs of not having to re-fertilize. As the city reaches the two-year benchmark of utilizing RTI products, they have yet to find the need to re-fertilize and their grasses look greener and more vibrant than they ever have.
This last year, RTI discovered the key to naturally utilizing one of natures greatest mysteries photosynthesis. Photosynthesis, the process of converting light energy to chemical energy and storing it in the bonds of sugar, has long since its discovery been used to significantly increase plant growth. [8] Until recently, manipulating levels of carbon dioxide was the only efficient method of increasing photosynthesis in crop production. RTI sought to find a natural alternative to CO2 tanks and burners, one that increased photosynthesis while leaving plants natural atmospheric state unaltered. Their answer? CO2, a revolutionary calcium carbonate foliar spray.
CO2 is unique in that its calcium carbonate source is naturally precipitated so finely that it is able to be absorbed through the stomata of plant leaves. Once inside the cell wall, it breaks off into usable calcium and usable carbon dioxide, effectively increases photosynthesis rates by up to 200%, reaching the optimal level that plants desire/require, and ending the need for environmentally-damaging tanks and burners altogether. CO2s unique delivery system requires that users only need to apply it on a bi-monthly basis, saving enormous amounts of time, labor, and money compared to conventional means. In addition, CO2 delivers another crucial benefit water retention. Due to CO2s method of delivery, via the intercellular space, the stomata of plant leaves no longer need to stay open in an attempt to fixate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, allowing for significant levels of transpiration (the evaporation of water into the atmosphere from the leaves and stems of plants), but they can now remain closed, effectively increasing the water retention capabilities of plants by up to 80%! [9]
Over the last 15 years this California-based company has shown time and again that when biological mimesis combines with green engineering, we can make products that take better care of our plants and better care of the planet.
Mykos and Azos are available for order at Reforestation Technologies International's website at
http://www.reforest.com/products/xtreme-gardening or by phone at 1-800-RTI-GROW (1-800-784-4769).
1)
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter7.pdf
2) Journal of the Soil Science Society of America, 2003
3)
http://www.fertilizer.org/content/download/22932/328667/version/1/file/2009_ifa_climate_change.pdf
4)
http://epa.gov/methane/reports/2001update.pdf
5) Simon, L., Bousquet, J., Levesque, C., Lalonde, M. (1993). "Origin and diversification of endomycorrhizal fungi and coincidence with vascular land plants". Nature 363: 6769.
6) Trappe, J.M. (1987) Phylogenetic and ecologic aspects of mycotrophy in the angiosperms from an evolutionary standpoint. Ecophysiology of VA Mycorrhizal Plants, G.R. Safir (EDS), CRC Press, Florida
7)
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20791104
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Courses/Bio104/photosyn.htm
9)
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/hyd/trsp.rxml