Trichoderma

[DirtMechanic]

Choaenephora Wet Rot reportedly has no cure. It has made a home in my garden. I have been using an iodophor to great effect, but that is a contact control and limits itself to the surfaces of plant and soil. I would like to improve the soil biologically, especially when fallow, but have a few questions about growing and using trichoderma. Currently i have to wait until it presents itself and if I am lucky I can take the flower off and save the squash. Its a daily affair because it is so fast. I would like to reduce that time involvement.

The drfungus.com site has this quote about tricho. Silly me I was thinking there was just one.

drfungus:
"The genus Trichoderma has five species; Trichoderma harzianum, Trichoderma koningii, Trichoderma longibrachiatum, Trichoderma pseudokoningii, and Trichoderma viride."

Reading about it on google led me to a vegetable specific report from India of 85% control by Trichoderma viride. I ordered some off the net, and some others for good measure. I intend to make them into a tea for spraying and at the next tilling I will incorporate it into the planting process. Has anybody used it in a fungal tea? If so did you use molasses? I read cooked rice is a growing medium as well.

At this point my understanding is that underground use is best. I know that cornmeal attracts tricho, but it feeds other fungi as well and with our moisture level and my habit of tight planting I do well just keeping food sources off the surface of the soil.

So I have isolated strains, enough knowledge to keep the stuff out of the house when I grow it out, and a superpower for making mistakes. What am I missing? I hope to incorporate the live tricho into a spray rotation. Are there bad "mixes" of living beneficials where tricho would kill say bT or bS or vice versa if I was adding insect control?

 

[Chuck]

I have never purchased tricho. As it is present in soils I have just always tried to just grow more of it by spreading cornmeal around and on my plants and by spraying cornmeal tea. I have found it to be effective mainly as a preventative. It seems as though once a pathogen has manifested itself it takes too long for the tricho to eradicate it. But, if I spray once a month or so and distribute the cornmeal at planting I very seldom ever have any kind of fungal problems. Even early blight if I spread more cornmeal and spray more often some years never appears at all. Only in years of a lot of rain does it become a major problem.

The picture of the fuzzy squash: I have had that same exact thing on my squash in the past. It only affected fruit. Other fungi attacked the plant. This seems to always happen when it rains a lot and by the time it is visible it is too late. I have also determined that cornmeal and cornmeal tea is basically ineffective in times of steady rain covering days and days of steady intermittent rain, mist and drizzle.

 

[DirtMechanic]

We "were" running a dry year, -6 inches drought even, and now a typically summer pattern has come with .25 to .5 inches daily in 4pm showers. The air is saturated to the point that if something can get dry in the first place then it does so in the few hours before the next rain.

I did not think cornmeal tea would be very sprayable. It sounds like you are filtering, and if so what mesh size are you using? Also, I have read that a water pump rather than my airstone is better for a fungal tea as high oxygen is not as useful as it would be in a bacterial tea.

I am going to try to colonize the tricho.verde down in the soil over time, or at least revitalize it every time I till. I read that it subsided over an 18 month period. I presume it is just finding a balance, and I am starting out with the idea of T.verde being overweight on purpose.

Ultimately I would hope the plants host it, such that anything like a cornmeal layer make it bloom. The epsoma tomato tone fertilizer attracts a fungi when it is on the surface around the plants. It has a light grey to yellowey white cotton candy weight thread gossamer appearance of fine puffy spiderweb. I have difficulty identifying Tricho on sight but that may be it. At least I hope so.

 

[Chuck]

We "were" running a dry year, -6 inches drought even, and now a typically summer pattern has come with .25 to .5 inches daily in 4pm showers. The air is saturated to the point that if something can get dry in the first place then it does so in the few hours before the next rain.

I did not think cornmeal tea would be very sprayable. It sounds like you are filtering, and if so what mesh size are you using? Also, I have read that a water pump rather than my airstone is better for a fungal tea as high oxygen is not as useful as it would be in a bacterial tea.

I am going to try to colonize the tricho.verde down in the soil over time, or at least revitalize it every time I till. I read that it subsided over an 18 month period. I presume it is just finding a balance, and I am starting out with the idea of T.verde being overweight on purpose.

Ultimately I would hope the plants host it, such that anything like a cornmeal layer make it bloom. The epsoma tomato tone fertilizer attracts a fungi when it is on the surface around the plants. It has a light grey to yellowey white cotton candy weight thread gossamer appearance of fine puffy spiderweb. I have difficulty identifying Tricho on sight but that may be it. At least I hope so.

When I make cornmeal tea what I do is just put a couple of handfuls into an old sock and put a knot in it and throw it into a bucket of water and let it sit for about 24 hours. I also remove the little filter on the end of the uptake hose on my sprayer. As far as a pump vs airstone all I have ever used are airstones. I use aquarium pumps that have two outlets and I use both outlets with airstones for a 5 gallon bucket of water and it seems to work fine. Trico is sometimes visible to the naked eye. It is greyish white and resembles a fine spiderweb. You can also spread cornmeal on the surface too heavily for the trico to grow on top but if you gently remove the crust of cornmeal you can sometimes see it growing on the bottom with strands going into the soil.

When I first got interested in trico I thought it was just too easy as I saw clumps of white fungus sprouting up all over the place. I had just dug in a lot of small wood chips a month or so before and had forgotten about it. The white fungus, I later found out, was a variety of dog vomit fungus. Helpful yes, but not trico.

 

[headfullofbees]

AFAIK molasses is for bacterial, rather than fungal, teas.
Fish emulsion is something you might look at.

 

[DirtMechanic]

AFAIK molasses is for bacterial, rather than fungal, teas.
Fish emulsion is something you might look at.

I wonder if its the proteins. I have seen fungal growth that may have been tricho on soy bean meal in my yard and it has crazy high protein values.

 

[headfullofbees]

I think it is, however I use woodchips in my compost tea, as I find them an excellent haven for beneficial fungi. They and biochar seriously increase mycorrhizae, so perhaps the same effect is possible with Trichoderma.

 

[DirtMechanic]

My expectation there is carbon as a medium like potting soil. Your levels of oxidation of the carbon must be full gamut. Fresh wood to pure carbon with no organic material. It sounds like a forest floor over time.

Are you using a particular sized mesh? I am imagining something of a continuing brew where you siphon off but keep the core alive? I know it sounds like a sourdough starter mix. When I was in Alaska I learned the crock in the kitchen corner got fed regularly and was usually given a pet name!

 

[headfullofbees]

My expectation there is carbon as a medium like potting soil. Your levels of oxidation of the carbon must be full gamut. Fresh wood to pure carbon with no organic material. It sounds like a forest floor over time.

Are you using a particular sized mesh? I am imagining something of a continuing brew where you siphon off but keep the core alive? I know it sounds like a sourdough starter mix. When I was in Alaska I learned the crock in the kitchen corner got fed regularly and was usually given a pet name!

I buy 30 denier women's tights.

 

[Chuck]

AFAIK molasses is for bacterial, rather than fungal, teas.
Fish emulsion is something you might look at.

Yes and no. Research has shown that lower amounts of molasses benefit fungi while high amounts of molasses benefit bacteria. Higher amounts of molasses reaches the point of diminishing returns for fungi. It was also found that large amounts of molasses showed the same thing for bacteria, thus another point of diminishing returns. Over all, it was found that organic matter added to the soil benefited bacteria more than molasses does, but molasses greatly enhanced fungal microbes. So from this study I presume that low to moderate amounts of molasses enhances the reproduction of both.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I buy 30 denier women's tights.

Why not... I am already using stockings for trellised watermelons.

 

[headfullofbees]

Why not... I am already using stockings for trellised watermelons.

Sure you are...