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Hi All,

As you may remember I planted out 42 cloves of Vayo last autumn, these have now been harvested and dried.

Two of the non-inoculated cloves died off during the winter so my results are based on 19 of the healthy bulbs of both inoculated and non-inoculated cloves.

My findings are that there is almost a 35% increase in harvested weight of inoculated to non-inoculated bulbs.

Now while this may be a long way short of the 150 to 250 % envisioned it is still a major step forward.

My other crop findings were as follows :-

Shallots:- an increase of 38%.

Onions:- an increase of 30%

Dwarf French beans:- wife collected some for sister in law, this put paid to any evidence of increased growth!!!!

potatoes:- an increase of 45%, this I found to be contrary to expectations, as in, alliums are supposedly more micorrhizal orientated than potatoes. But as I have said this is a learning process, and it is what we establish in actual results that count. It should also be noted that the only manure used was chicken manure in pelleted form.

However it should be noted that a dilution of EM's was added at the time of planting, as with all my other crops.

sweet corn:- A very poor summer meant that I got nothing from my efforts!

Leeks:- the leeks are flourishing and I can see a difference in growth between the inoculated and non-inoculated plants both in height and girth. This data will obviously be available next year as they are a winter / early spring crop.

Drying beans:- a disaster, during the high winds experienced in Scotland during September my bean structure collapsed breaking most stems at ground level. The beans never recovered, however next season I will be cultivating them on my new plot which has more shelter from the wind. I did manage to salvage most pods, however they were so tangled up and broken that I could not tell which was which!!!

The plants did achieve a height of 10 feet on the inoculated plants and 8 feet on the non-inoculated plants

It is my belief that increased growth is related to the amount of inoculated charcoal and compost within the soil. The more inoculated charcoal which we add to the soil, the better will be the results of our harvests.

I see a time when all that will be required will be to spread sea weed on the soil in the autumn for the charcoal to soak up. In the spring this will be dug into the soil along with compost, EM's will breakdown this rich nutrient base into a form easily assimilated by the VAM's.

Charcoal is a bio-accumulator, as in, it has the ability to soak up great amounts of nutrition then release this nutrient to the plants via the VAM's. The more inoculated charcoal the greater the number of VAM's and the amount of nutrient uptake by VAM type crops.

This nutrient in its raw form will be further broken down by both VAM's and EM's to ensure that our crops receive higher amounts of nutrient in a form which their roots can easily assimilate.

I will be adding comfrey to next seasons inoculation mixture, the nutrient value of this herb and the vast array of trace elements which it contains is quite astounding.

I am now convinced that comfrey is worthy of inclusion into the inoculation liquid, however I will still be adding molasses due to its affinity with VAM's.

this is, and will be, an ongoing learning process, however I must be honest enough to see this addition to the inoculation liquid as being worthwhile.

It would seem that comfrey is such a case, fortunately I have no problem in accepting comfrey into the inoculation recipe.

I spent weeks delving into its nutrient advantages when used as a fertiliser and am satisfied that it will bring much worth to our experiment.

comfrey contains the following:-

Vitamins A,B,C and E.
Minerals:- Calcium, chromium, cobalt, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, phosphorus, selenium, sodium, tin and zinc. It also contains many trace minerals. Comfrey is also one of the richest sources of silicon in the botanic world.

Chemical Constituents of Comfrey

It is also worth noting that Tony has used a much longer saturation time for his inoculated charcoal, this may also be of relevance to the end result.

Yet I still believe that the restoration of VAM's and EM's to our soils is the key to recreating a Terra preta type soil. I say this because our soils are in very poor condition, we need to find a way out of our chemical cultivation of the soil!

This form of agriculture is not only killing life within the soil, it is seeping down into the water table to poison the water which we drink. It is also killing life within our streams and rivers, what's worse is that we are allowing this to happen!

Now the real advantage of adding inoculated charcoal is that year by year we will increase the number of VAM spores within our soil.

The VAM increase within the soil I believe is relative to the amount of inoculated charcoal added to said soil. This will cause the creation of many more VAM spores ready to infect the roots of all endo-mycorrhizal type crops. The molasses within the inoculation mixture will I believe ensure their survival.

Once we divorce ourselves from the chemical form of cultivating the soil we should see the results begin to take place. Life will return to the soil, and with it will return all the necessary mutual symbiosis which Mother nature has deemed essential to the cultivation of crops.

This is how Mother nature works at this level and it is best that we let her do so. She after all knows what works, whereas we have shown immense ignorance in our cultivation techniques!!

As I have said before it is my belief that our indigenous VAM's and EM's have been denatured or killed off due to the use of inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and weed killers. It is now down to us to redress the balance of nature within our soils.

Unfortunately things are going to get much worse on the financial front. Greece is an enormous black hole sucking up money that it can never possibly hope repay.

In a world which is apparently teetering on the brink of financial ruin we would best fend for ourselves!!!

We must think of what vegetables we need for the necessities of life. Potatoes, peas, marrow fat peas,carrot, turnip, beans, Brussels sprouts and a host of other vegetables all have their heritage varieties.

We would do well to seed save from these varieties because at the moment things are only going to get worse.

I say these things, not as a harbinger of doom, but as a wake up call, we must start cultivating heritage crops which are good croppers, store well and breed true to type.

And remember that we,I believe can increase the harvest potential of these heritage crops through the use of inoculated charcoal, VAM's, EM's.

So buying heritage seed stock is a must for those who want to keep cultivating the soil for food!

At the end of the day each of us must make decisions as to how they go forward, for me it is heritage seed stock.

Just take a look at seed garlic prices, on average up by nearly 40%, and that does not include postage and packing which is also on the increase.

These companies know that we will pay up because we have nowhere else to go. However if we get back to seed saving from heritage crops we can dispense with them!!!

We must all re-learn how to seed save from our crops to nullify increasing costs, choose heavy croppers and long keepers. Allow one or two of your crop like leeks, onions and garlic to go to seed each season for this purpose. It may even necessitate buying a small pollytunnel whereby this seed can be started as soon as seed is collected.

Tomato seed will keep for between 5 to 7 years.

Peppers and beets will keep almost as long.

Peas, beans, cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts will keep for 3 years.

Squash, cucumber and melon will keep for 5 years.

Corn, onions, leek and salsify will only keep for a year.

These time periods are based on proper storage of said seeds, and also on the manner of collection.

However this is an indicator of what can be done to reduce our reliance on seed catalogues.

Personally I would let the biggest of my crops to go to seed, thereby ensuring the vigour of the strain.

Crops which have shown increased resistance to disease or insect attack would also be seed saved.

We have so much to re-learn with regard to cultivating by Mother nature's rules, my own perception is that our ancient tribe's people knew a hell of lot more about cultivating the soil than we do in this regard.

These are the things which we will need to do, the tiny cloves from seed garlic which are normally thrown away, will be kept. These will be grown on, dried out, then re-planted out in the autumn.

These are just my thoughts others will disagree.


http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/grow...vities/A56.pdf

Why save seed?

Seed Saving Introduction - Allotment Vegetable Growing

Seed Swap what to save

http://www.cat.org.uk/membership/dow...IllegalVeg.pdf

Uriel

The mind is like a parachute, its totally useless unless its open