As Arbor Care Professionals know, trees require a healthy environment to grow and thrive, including a healthy soil ecosystem, sunlight for energy, the right amount of water, and low amounts of stress.
Some environments, such as new building sites‚ are severely lacking in the elements required to support a tree. Construction, tillage, compaction, erosion, and even over-fertilization can negatively impact the soil and harm the supportive fungi on which trees depend. Waiting until stress is impacting a tree makes the recovery journey exponentially more difficult than maintaining a healthy tree.
Mycorrhizae help increase plant establishment and growth, extend the roots’ surface area for better uptake of minerals and nutrients, and boost resistance to stress. Tree health and overall performance is enhanced due to the increased root surface area, allowing the plant to tolerate a wide variety of environmental extremes such as drought, salty irrigation water or soils, and waterlogged, compacted, or anaerobic soils. Research shows that trees and plants receiving a mycorrhizal inoculation experience as much as a fifty fold increase in absorbing root surface area. Plant color, foliage, and overall health of the tree improve with the use of mycorrhizal fungi.
Arbor care specialists can utilize this technology in a number of ways. For existing trees, arbor professionals can apply MycoApply® through injections or drench treatments into the root zone. When planting new trees, MycoApply® inoculants can be applied to the root ball, added to backfill soil, and/or drenched into planting holes. The key is to get the mycorrhizal propagules in contact with growing roots.
Mycorrhizal benefits include:
- Improved transplant survival and growth
- More effective rooting
- Improved soil structure
- Increased fertilizer utilization
- Decreased drought stress
- Tolerance of environmental extremes
- Reduced off-site pollution of surface and groundwater
- Improved germination
