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Re: Mustard meal seed treatment



LFL's idea of adding the plant materials that contain substances that suppress the germination of seeds is much less problematical for me.  When toxic materials are added WITH foods for the organisms, there is much less negative impact on the beneficial biology.

Arden Anderson has done some work on this with us.  If you have to put inorganic fertilizers in, add them WITH some organic matter to help the bacteria and fungi out.  The negative impact on the organisms is significantly less.  Sorry, not aware of published papers on this one, just observation so far.  Needs to be documented with fully scientific studies, but it would be easy (?) for a graduate student to take this one on as their master's research.   

And if you are aware that you are possibly reducing the populations of beneficials, you can always add the beneficials back after they are impacted.  That's the nice thing about inocula that you can buy, whether it's inocula in a jug, or as compost, or compost tea.  Your choice on how to add back.  

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com