Teaming with Fungi: The organic grower’s guide to mycorrhizae
Author: Jeff Lowenfels
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 978-1-60469-729-2
Through his book Teaming with Fungi, author Jeff Lowenfels, aims to dispel the myths associated with fungi; this book informs and educates readers about fungi and their fascinating relationship with plants. 80-95% of all plants form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi. These relationships are incredibly beneficial to plants, so it makes sense for gardeners, horticulturists, and those working in forestry, agriculture, plant propagation, or indeed any career or hobby based around plants, to learn and understand more about mycorrhizal fungi species and the true nature of their relationship with plants. Jeff Lowenfels’ book, Teaming with Fungi, is the organic grower’s guide to mycorrhizae, this book will help you grow bigger, better plants, by utilising the partnership that plants form with mycorrhizal fungi.
When I first began reading Teaming with Fungi, right from the very first page, I sensed and admired the keenness, drive, and passionate desire of the author, Jeff Lowenfels, to make knowledge of mycorrhizal fungi more widely known and understood.
Teaming with Fungi is a book of two halves, the first part of this book focuses on the science, while the second part concentrates on the application of this science. I admired Jeff Lowenfels’ engaging writing throughout reading this book, which provides the reader with an important and interesting guide to mycorrhizae and their role in agriculture, horticulture, and hydroponics.
Readers of Teaming with Fungi will learn how mycorrhizal fungi work in partnership with plants to help their host plants be more able to withstand drought, stress, root pathogens, diseases, and other difficulties, and how to make best use of this symbiotic relationship when growing your own plants.
As well as learning how to utilise the power of the mycorrhizae to grow stronger, healthier and more resilient plants, Teaming with Fungi readers will also learn what inhibits these useful groups of fungi, to fully understand what prevents mycorrhizal fungi from successfully colonising an area. Teaming with Fungi provides useful and practical advice on how to ensure you use mycorrhizal fungi to the best advantage for whatever plants you’re growing, there is information for all manner of growing, from hydroponic applications, to how to inoculate seeds, to how to apply the appropriate mycorrhizal fungi species to bare root plants, transplanted plants, and container grown plants.
Teaming with Fungi readers will learn how best to use fertilisers alongside mycorrhizal fungi as well as how to collect and create their own mycorrhizal fungi to inoculate their own plants.
I am sure that Teaming with Fungi readers will find the lists of which type of mycorrhizal fungi supports which plants, and the tables that are included in this book very useful indeed. There are step-by-step recipes, with clear instructions for how to choose and then create the mycorrhizal inoculation that is best suited to the plants you’re growing and your chosen growing method. Once read, Teaming with Fungi will be a useful reference book.
Teaming with Fungi provides information for how to successfully use mycorrhizal fungi to improve the growth and establishment of all manner of plants from: vegetables, fruits, edible plants, trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, bedding plants, bulbs, grasses, ericaceous loving plants, and even cannabis!
There’s a section on current and future studies of mycorrhizae and a useful reference section with further information and resources at the back of the book.
I am sure that Teaming with Fungi will help to inform and educate both students of horticulture and gardeners on this fascinating, helpful, and very interesting subject.
To visit Timber Press – this book’s publisher’s website, for more information about Jeff Lowenfels’ book, Teaming with Fungi, please click here.
Other articles that may interest you…………….
To read my review of Tony Kirkham and George E. Brown’s book, Essential Pruning Techniques, please click here.
To read my review of Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis’ book, Teaming with Microbes, please click here.
To read my review of Jeff Lowenfels’ book, Teaming with Nutrients, please click here.
To read my review of Richard Mabey’s book, The Cabaret of Plants, please click here.
