Viewing post #807203 by RickCorey

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Mar 10, 2015 3:52 PM CST
Name: Rick Corey
Everett WA 98204 (Zone 8a)
Sunset Zone 5. Koppen Csb. Eco 2f
Frugal Gardener Garden Procrastinator I helped beta test the first seed swap Plant and/or Seed Trader Seed Starter Region: Pacific Northwest
Photo Contest Winner: 2014 Avid Green Pages Reviewer Garden Ideas: Master Level Garden Sages I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! I helped plan and beta test the plant database.
I think that maintaining a healthy (diverse) population of soil microbes in a pot would be pretty difficult.

Just keeping enough generic decomposers alive to break down organic matter into soluble nutrients might be a challenge.

I'm not experienced with potted plants, but living soil is such a miracle that I wonder how easily it can be re-created in a pot.

Adding MR to "sterile" potting soil seems less likely to hurt than to help.

Non-woody pl,ants mostly use what used to be called endo-MR. Maybe the newer term "arbuscular MR" means around the same thing, I forget. Each plant species might have just a few species of MR that it "likes best", but I think they can make some use of less-preferred endo-MR.

I think there are many more kinds of Ecto-MR (mostly for woody plants) than endo-MR, as one comment mentioned.

You might try harvesting some fine roots from a healthy plant by doing a little root pruning. Mixing those into a new pot for the same kind of 0lant MIGHT get you some of what that plant most needs - but you might also import a specialized, efficient plant pathogen that just LOVES to kill that variety of plant.

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