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Re: [SANET-MG] BBC NEWS | UK | England | Tyne/Wear | Researchers hail organic potatoes



While we're at it we might as well put together a complete list of all soil-dwelling growth promoting, disease preventing, nitrogen-fixing, soil health and biodiversity-building microorganisms, invertebrates and other organisms. Elaine has a list of 7 of the most important.
We could use them as primary categories to build on.

LL

I am probably a great disappointment to others in my profession of biologist but I have so far not had too much interest in species specific relationships in soil. We know there are at least 25.000 (maybe 40.000) different species of micro organism in an average spoonful of soil. The number of possible relationships between all these organisms is a bit too complex for my purpose (which was growing potatoes organically in Ireland without having problems with blight).

My reasoning was that there was probably some organism in all that lot that would live on Phytophtora infestans (blight) and that would thus protect potato crops from this disease if only it were plentiful enough. To get it plentiful I grew blight prone potato varieties and let the diseased plant-parts rot in situ then planted more potatoes on top that I left in the ground over the wettest winter imaginable.

As I explained before on this list (it is slightly more complex than the very shortened story here) I have been able to grow potatoes absolutely blight free for at least 15 years now. Whether my guardian angel organism is Pisolithus tinctorius I doubt because we don't have "dog-turd-mushrooms" here at all.

I was interested in growing healthy potatoes in the first place for my own family and that has been successful but to get rich out of potato blight it is necessary to come up with specific names so that patents can be secured. That I will gladly leave to someone else for I can see a few other priorities in my life.

Wishing you every success though,
John
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