sugar snap peas and inoculant

[Lynnmac 0]

My sugar snap pea seeds say they need an inoculant to help " produce high-nitrogen nodules on plant roots". Does anyone anything about this and where canI purchase it?

[Janet Macunovich 32]

Pam Palechek found inoculant at a feed- and pet food store in.... Wixom? ... years ago. Perhaps she'll drop in and remind me what her source was! If I was looking for it a farmer's co-op like that is where I'd start. I'd call Dale White at Uncle Luke's in Troy, MI, or stop in at Chelsea Co-op by the old railroad station. Or order it on-line -- Cooks Garden, Johnny's Seed and other vegetable focused seed companies carry it.

However, our feeling is that if you have healthy soil you probably have the bacteria that team up with pea family plants already there -- especially if you've grown or are growing plants in that family, from clover to wisteria

[Lynnmac 0]

Thanks Guru, I've never been to Uncle Lukes, so I think I'll check there. I got my seeds from Johnnys Seeds so I'll try there if Uncle Luke comes up empty. I tried growing a different variety of sugar snaps last year, but they turned brown and died. I'm sure the soil if contaminated with fusariun or the other tomato infection. Our tomatoes and cukes did the same thing, but we had a good harvest. They were planted in new raised beds, but I think the rototiller spread the problem. Could this be possible.

[Janet Macunovich 32]

It's possible to spread a disease by carrying its spores on equipment but there are two reasons I doubt that was the problem with your peas.

 

One, if some spores are dropped onto a new site, their concentration is probably so low in comparison to the point of origin that plants in the new spot are almost as safe as anywhere in the world. Those diseases that can host on lots of species and multiple families (such as both nightshade/tomato family and pea family) are pretty much ubiquitous. Plants only "catch" them when they become susceptible for some reason or when the spot they're in gets saturated with the spores as bits of infected leaf and free spores accumulate. (Like being closed in a room full of sick people. Even if you're amazingly healthy your chances are a lot greater of catching something.)

Two, the fusarium that peas get is a different organism than what infects tomatoes -- same species, different strain of fungus -- while the verticillium doesn't normally affect peas, period. (Where we find "pea" and "verticillium" listed together, it's because the researcher needed a non-susceptible host.)

 

Is it possible your peas mildewed? Mildew looks like you describe, when the host plant is small or so susceptible (both things apply to seedling peas) that the mildew destroys the leaf before it, itself ca mature to the stage of producing the white or downy coating we associate with the disease.

 

It probably wasn't a beneficial bacteria issue. If they died of starvation because they had no/not enough nitrogen for lack of helper bacteria, they would have allowed older leaves to go pale and die as the plant scavenged nitrogen from there or use in the growing tips.

 

Pam Palechek, sent this:

I have used innoculant some years and others not....can not say I saw a huge difference. Dr. Bob Gough in The Smart Gardener's Guide to Growing Vegetables says....,The roots contain small nodules that hold Rhizobium bacteria, which fix atmospheric nitrogen into a form useful to the plant. So beforer planting, some gardeners treat their seeds with Rhizobium innoculant (vetch group IV). They claim that this is important, especially if the ground was not planted to peas within the last five years. Some scientists don't believe it's that important, and it's difficult to show a real increase in yields from the innoculated seeds. But the innoculant is expensive, & if it makes you feel good to innoculate, then by all means do it. It can't hurt to do it. Sprinkle a bit of water onto the seeds to dampen them, then put them and the innoculant into a paper bag and shake until the seeds are covered with the dust.

[Lynnmac 0]

Thanks for all the info from both of you--much appreciated.

[gardenfaerie 1]

I never even heard of inoculant until very recently and have grown peas fine without it--I will do a little experiment this year--inoculating some plants, but not others, and seeing if there is any difference. In the Ann Arbor area, I'm hoping Downtown Home & Garden or the Dexter Feed Mill will carry it.