In article
,
Ecnerwal wrote:

In article
songbird writes:

i'll be interested in what he says, but i
would not be surprised if it isn't aimed at
reducing fungal diseases (if you don't have
organic material on the surface of the soil
then the spores have fewer places to hide
from the sun's uv rays).

my own recent experiences has told me that
this is a false approach. instead i had very
good results from using leaves and wood chips
to help greatly reduce a spotted disease that
has been getting at the lillies in the spring.

My understanding is that (how shocking!) it depends.

The usual logic for burning cuttings is to directly remove any disease
specific to the plant that's already in the cuttings, and indirectly
remove highly-compatible host material for diseases of the plant.

Contrariwise, covering the soil surface cuts down on (primarily viral,
so far as I recall) soil-borne diseases spread by foliage contact with
rain-splashed soil particles. Tomatoes are a classic in this line.

So, you'd probably be fine chipping (except they are a bear to chip,
actually - unclogging a chipper gets rather tedious) grape vine prunings
and putting them around your tomatoes, if those were far from your
grapes. Not so much putting them around your grapes. Since vinyards
mostly just grow grapes, burning makes sense for both disease control
and returning non-volatile nutrients, but probably more the former.

The assessment of the value of mulch in a vineyard is still a work in
progress. Canes, when burned, are removed from the vineyard first. The
ash isn't returned. In general, organic material holds water, and
encourages a diverse soil ecology. The diversity of the ecology in turn
will block pathogenic microbes. Vineyards do encourage wild mustard to
grow in the vineyard before bud break, but then the mustard is
controlled with Roundup, and the vineyards are basically bare dirt most
of the year. Whether this is just inertia, or whether it is considered
best practices, I don't know. Is the financial savings of using
gylphosate sufficient to over come its drawbacks as listed by Dr. Don
Huber, recently retired from Purdue University, i.e.
1) Glyphosate binds with and inactivates EPSPS, the critical enzyme in
the shikimate pathway required for the synthesis of aromatic plant
metabolites including essential amino acids phenylalanine, tryptophan
and tyrosine, as well as downstream products such as plant growth
promoter, indoylacetic acid and plant defence compounds, phytoalexins.
But glyphosate has multiple adverse effects that act synergistically on
crop health and productivity that extends well beyond the plant into the
soil ecosystem and the wider environment.*

2) The Glyphosate Tolerant (GT) trait depends on incorporating an EPSPS
from the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens that is insensitive to
glyphosate, hence glyphosate is taken up by GT plants and translocated
to the growing parts of roots and shoots, and even exuded into the
rhizosphere (soil surrounding the roots) so it can affect the soil
community of microorganisms and also subsequent crops planted in the
soil.

3) Glyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence
of pathogens such as Fusarium, and ³can have serious consequences for
sustainable production of a wide range of susceptible crops.² They warn
that ³Ignoring potential non-target detrimental side effects of any
chemical, especially used as heavily as glyphosate, may have dire
consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops
non-productive, and plants less nutritious.²

4) In an interview [5] with the Organic & Non-GMO Report, Huber said he
has been researching glyphosate for 20 years, and began noticing
problems when he saw a consistent increase in ³take-all², a fungal
disease of wheat, when glyphosate had been applied in a previous year to
control weeds. He found glyphosate reduced manganese in plants, which is
essential to many plant defence reactions against disease and
environmental stress. Glyphosate can immobilize plant nutrients such as
manganese, copper, potassium iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc, so they
are no longer nutritionally functional. Basically, glyphosate completely
weakens the plant, making it susceptible to soil-borne fungal pathogens.
³That is one reason why we see an increase in plant diseases,² he said.

5) There has been a general increase in the number of plant diseases in
the past 15 to 18 years. Four primary soil fungi,* Fusarium, Phythium,
Rhizoccccctonia, and Phytophthora, have become more active with the use
of glyphosate; and concomitantly, diseases caused by these fungi have
increased, such as head scab in corn, or root rot in soybeans, crown rot
in sugar beets. Fusarium head blight, which affects cereal crops, is a
disease that produces a mycotoxin that could enter the food chain.

There are more than 40 diseases reported with the use of glyphosate, and
the number keeps growing as people recognize the association, Huber said.

=====

In conversation, I have found that there is some concern about the
effects of Roundup on the soil ecology.

I realize that this is ranging far from the subject of drought, and I'll
try to bring it back home.

In the meantime I've been expecting Farm1 to take me to task for my last
comments about organic material in the ground, and trees to fight
drought. I'm sure she has considered them, and what efforts she has made
in this direction, or why not.

You out there Farm1?

Anyone, anyone?
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