Rhizobacteria are bacteria that naturally live in the root environment of plants. They colonise the area around the roots. It is called the good soil life.
The rhizobacteria interact with the plant. There are many different types of rhizobacteria.
With the help of a good soil life, plants can build up a healthy and natural resistance to diseases and attacks.
With a bad soil life, a plant will get diseases and will eventually die.
Bad bacteria are easy to displace by adding good bacteria.
Rhizobacteria can be divided into 3 groups.
1. The nitrogen binders bacteria.
2. The phosphate-releasing bacteria.
3. The hormone-producing bacteria.
Roots emit sugars and the sugars attract the bacteria.
It is important that the Rhizobacteria prevail over the bad bacteria to prevent diseases and to make food available to the plant.
The simplest way is to do this by simply administer bacteria every week with the water.
Another advantage that the Rhizobacteria have around a root point is that it can correct an incorrect pH to the correct pH on the spot.
With Rhizobacteria the plant can get more nutrients that result in a bigger growth. The Rhizobacteria get sugar back from the plant roots and lives in Symbiosis with the plant.
Trichoderma
Roots can only fill a maximum of 10% of a pot, more is simply not possible. However, we can considerably increase the capacity of these roots with root fungi the so-called Demycorrhiza or Trichoderma fungi.
Trichoderma fungi connect itself with the plant root.
The Trichoderma hyphae grow many meters from the roots and are microscopically thin, they come to places where roots can never come.
This makes the root system of plants up to hundreds of times larger than for plants that have to do without these fungal threads.
Trichoderma take up nutrients and transport it to the plant root.
The Trichoderma lives in Symbiosis with the plant and do all this in exchange for a little sugar that it get back from the plant root.
The fungal threads also secrete a portion of this sugar that they do not use themselves around the threads, which in turn attracts the Rhizobacteria present. Because the Rhizobacteria are present around the fungal threads, which in turn promotes nutritional intake, the soil also receives the correct pH.
These days even hydroponic growers on Rockwool are using Trichoderma and Rhizobacteria for there crops.
However, a bacterial preparation cannot be stored in liquid form for a long time because bacteria need sugars to survive. Without sugars, bacteria only live for 3 days in wet conditions.
With sugars, a liquid preparation would expand in a short time (bacteria multiply) and a bottle may even explode. When the sugars run out, the bacteria die.
Hence a liquid bacteria or enzyme product is rarely encountered in gardens and agriculture (or it is fake).
