Custom Berry Ground Microflora
We organic gardeners depend more than many of us realize on a group of soil microflora (tiny plants) with the two-dollar name mycorrhizae (my-co-risé-ae), a term that encompasses many related species of microscopic fungus that inhabit healthy, living organic soil in a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship with the root systems of nearly all living plants, berry plants included. For the past half-billion years, these tiny, underground relatives of mushrooms have evolved in concert with sun-loving green plants.
Like all fungi, mycorrhizae contain no chlorophyll, so lack green plants’ ability to synthesize sugar from water and sunlight. They obtain nourishment by tapping into host plants’ roots. In return, they exert a beneficial mechanical and chemical influence on the surrounding soil by extending root fibers and converting raw soil components into forms more readily absorbed and metabolized by their host plants. In addition, the fungi facilitate water intake and transpiration while moderating intake of salt and other chemical soil pollutants. Plants growing in soil inoculated with the appropriate species of mycorrhizae will survive transplantation more easily and will grow and produce better, faster and more uniformly.
A four-year-old California firm, EcoLife Corporation, is growing a variety of mycorrhizae in an all-natural process discovered by founder Mike Brock. Ecolife calls their product Bio-Vam. In addition to the mycorrhizae, Bio-Vam contains nitrogen-fixing bacteria, nematode trapping fungi, humic and folic acid, minerals and other ingredients to give seeds or transplants the best start. Each transplant is inoculated with about one teaspoon of Bio-Vam in the field, is roots soaked in kelp and is planted between the rows of old plants, which will eventually lose vitality and be replaced by the new stock. Annual safflower, rape, mustard and daikon radish are planted as cover crops to put roots down into the soil, break up compaction, capture nitrogen and give some nematode protection.
Ecolife can custom-mix Bio-Vam for most any application, but so far deals in bulk quantities for nurseries or farms. Home gardeners can obtain small lots from their Northeastern distributor: T&J Enterprises of Spokane, Washington. Order through the secure server on their Internet site: www.tandjenterprises.com. A trial package of wide-spectrum Bio-Vam is available for only $4 prepaid. A quart goes for less than $25 plus shipping. Considering that each quart contains 192 teaspoons and you only need 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per transplant, you can guarantee super production from this fall’s raspberry plantings and have enough Bio-Vam left over for next season’s vegetable garden.
Tissue Culture Cloning for Disease-Free Plants
Many berries propagate vegetatively, that is, baby plants sprout from above-ground runners, underground stolons or live cuttings from a parent plant rather than from seeds. With such direct and prolonged plant-to-plant contact, parents can’t help but transmit viral diseases to offspring. And, since there is no effective treatment for viral rusts and blights, it was long thought that breeding in resistance, soil fumigation and periodic renewal of virus-plagued plantings with fresh stock were a routine part of berry culture.
But some years ago, strawberry researchers discovered they could clone disease-free plants by propagating young plants from embryonic “meristem” cells removed from the minuscule tip ends of growing shoots. This undifferentiated plant tissue grows so rapidly that viral infection in the parent has no chance to reach it.
Disease-free meristem cells are removed under a microscope, propagated into tiny plants in test tubes, transferred to laboratory growing cells, then finally planted in sterile ground. Resulting “tissue-cultured” (TC) plants are disease free, healthier and more productive than plants propagated in the usual way. Plantings will remain virus free and productive for years till pathogens arrive from outside.
Meristem culture has recently been adapted to grow popular caneberries as well as strawberries. You can purchase young (four-inch-tall) TC raspberry and blackberry plants right out of the lab, or larger first-generation plants grown in sterilized soil in the nursery.
Before planting any disease-free berry plants, we recommend that you remove and burn any old berry plants along with their mulch, and plant the former berry patch to a green manure, then to assorted garden vegetables. Dig a new berry patch in fresh ground (ideally, soil that has been planted to grains or vegetables for a year or two).
Most important, to keep viral infestation away, pull (roots and all) and burn all live, wild cane berries growing within 1,000 feet or less of the new plants. Burning dead canes, leaves and natural mulch beneath the wild plants is also a good idea. Do this the season before planting new stock to avoid smoke-borne contamination of new plants by nearly indestructible virus spores. Source for TC berries: Nourse Farms, 41 River Road, South Deerfield, MA 01373
Ribes and the Infamous White Pine Blister Rust
In the early part of this soon-to-be-history century, plant scientists discovered that the fungus that causes destructive white pine blister rust on five-needled pine trees must spend part of its tree-infecting-spore-production cycle as a harmless hitchhiker on a secondary host: wild ribes (gooseberry and currant species). In the Northeast, everything from the masts of sailing ships to matchsticks was made from tall, straight, sweet-cutting white (five-needled) pine. With the imagined threat of a blister rust plague looming over the timber industry, most Northcentral and Northeastern states passed laws against importing domesticated ribes onto their soil.
By the 1960’s, it was known that the white pine blister rust uses only wild native ribes species as an intermediate host, not the domesticated varieties. But hardly anyone noticed; what with once-wooden gadgets all being molded from plastic, and building lumber taken over by southern white pine and California Douglas fir, the white pine is no longer an essential building commodity. Due in part to the Eastern states’ century-long importation ban, ribes never assumed the same popularity in America as in Europe.
Many of the ancient anti-ribes laws remain on the books, though not all are enforced. But the popular belief persists that gooseberries and currants carry the white pine blister rust. Some nurserymen will not ship ribes berry plants into historically prohibited areas, and others leave it up to the buyer. At present (fall 1999) ribes may not be shipped into Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Rhode Island. States with some restrictions include: Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. The rule of thumb is: “Do not plant ribes within 1,000 feet of a stand of five-needled pine.”
Our advice is that you abide by the rule. Originally, a “stand” of pine meant a forest containing enough trees to be logged off profitably. These litigious days, if your neighbor’s lone front-yard white pine falls ill from whatever malady, your gooseberries are liable to be held responsible. And they may be. Plant developers use wild berry stocks in crossbreeding to incorporate their native vigor and hardiness, color or taste into new varieties. Unknown to anyone, the latest hot new variety of currant or gooseberry may well harbor a native parent plants susceptibility to white pine blister rust.
Wild berries are abundant in our wild lands and largely ignored by today’s suburbanized population. In times of genuine scarcity, rather than a supermarket luxury, berries would become a staple food for those of us who know where the wild ones grow, and when and how to harvest them.
