Big Valley Donkey Ranch - Help Our Plants Grow

One Easy Way to Help Our Plants Grow

By Big Valley Staff, February 22, 2025

In this article we will briefly discuss the rhizosphere and a simple way each of us can help our plants grow.

The Plant Microbiome

The plant microbiome is a community of microorganisms that live in and around a plant. These microorganisms include bacteria, fungi, viruses, nematodes, and protists. The plant microbiome is a key part of the plant's health and growth.

How to Help The Plants:

There's a product available for sale, but you can also make it yourself, it just takes longer. It's called Mycorrhizal fungi.

Mycorrhizal fungi increases the surface area of plant roots helping the plant's ability to absorb nutrients, helps plants become more drought tolerant, improves soil structure, and suppresses diseases, which all leads to better plant growth and more food!

Apply it directly to the roots when planting or mix it into the soil. Minimize soil disturbance and reduce chemical use to protect these beneficial fungi.

Here is a great article that provides instruction on how to make it yourself:

How to make homemade mycorrhizal fungi.

January 26, 2025 by Tony O'Neill, " ", Simplify Gardening <https://simplifygardening.com/how-to-make-homemade-mycorrhizal-fungi/>

Nobori, Tatsuya, "The plant microbiome: From ecology to reductionism and beyond (Annu.Rev.Microbiol)." Plant Science Research Weekly. June 26, 2020

https://plantae.org/review-the-plant-microbiome-from-ecology-to-reductionism-and-beyond-annu-rev-microbiol/

Microorganisms in the plant microbiome help the plant with:

-Nutrient uptake

-Growth promotion

-Pathogen resistance

-Environmental stress tolerance

Jin, Benjamin, "Review. The soil-borne identity and microbiome-assisted agriculture: Looking back to the future (Molecular Plant).

"Plant Science Research Weekly, October 23, 2020

<https://plantae.org/review-the-soil-borne-identity-and-microbiome-assisted-agriculture-looking-back-to-the-future-molecular-plant/>

How Plants Recruit Their Microbiome

"Recruit their microbiome" means that an organism, like a plant,

actively selects and attracts specific microbes from its environment

to establish a beneficial community of microorganisms around it.

Releasing chemical signals that attract certain microbes while deterring others,

thus shaping its microbiome to support its growth and health.

Choosing which microbes to include in its microbiome based on its needs.

Plants recruit their microbiome from the rhizosphere, phyllosphere, spermosphere, anthosphere, and carposphere.

In this article we will briefly discuss the rhizosphere and a simple way each of us can help our plants grow.

The Rhizosphere

The rhizosphere is the zone of soil surrounding a plant root where the biology and chemistry of the soil are influenced by the root. This zone is about 1 mm wide, but has no distinct edge.

The Role of Root Taper on Soil Erodibility: A Critique on the Tripartite Classification of Rooted Soils - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Tripartite-Classification-Scheme-used-to-differentiate-the-rhizoplane-rhizosphere-and_fig1_308915540 [accessed 8 Feb 2025]

Out here in the High Desert, where every green shoot is a small miracle and every harvest feels like a handshake with creation, the secret to strong plants isn’t found in fancy bottles or complicated formulas. It begins underground — in the narrow, unseen frontier where roots meet soil and life gathers in numbers too great to count.

This is the rhizosphere, a living borderland only a millimeter wide, yet busy as a frontier town at sundown. Here, bacteria, fungi, and countless tiny allies trade nutrients, build soil structure, guard against disease, and help plants stand strong against drought. It’s a world God stitched together with precision, long before we had words like “microbiome” to describe it.

And in this bustling underground, one partner stands out like a seasoned trail guide: mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi stretch the reach of every root, pulling in water, minerals, and strength from places the plant could never reach alone. A pinch at planting time — or a homemade batch tended with patience — can turn struggling soil into a thriving ecosystem.

Helping our plants grow isn’t complicated. It’s about honoring the quiet workers beneath our boots, disturbing the soil less, using fewer harsh chemicals, and giving roots the companions they were designed to travel with. Out here, where the land teaches us daily, even the smallest act of stewardship can change the whole story of a garden.