I had dug up this catalpa tree for my mother-in-law a few months ago when she visited.
In order to pack it for her to take home, I had soaked some shredded cardboard in Terraganix EM-1 microorganisms. The EM-1 has some lactic acid bacteria, brewer's yeast, and purple non-sulfur bacteria in addition to other microbes. I mixed it 50-50 with some blackstrap molasses to activate it.
I then packed the roots in the cardboard, and left the top of the tree out of the bag.
This is a few months later; she hasn't had a chance to plant it yet, but the tree is doing pretty well in this cardboard-soaked-in-EM-1 mix:
Here's a closeup of the bag. Looks like the cardboard is starting to break down in here.
Not ideal that the tree isn't in the ground yet, but if you need to preserve some plants until you have time to plant them, this works pretty well for me.
I can share some other resources on Effective Microorganisms (EM) if you're interested.
The other thing cool about EM-1 was discovered after the Fukashima nuclear plant accident. At a nursery in Japan, they were testing the crops after the fallout to make sure that there were not radioactive elements present in the food.
One of the fruit nurseries does a soil drench and foliar application of EM-1 to build up the biology in the soil and on the leaves.
They found that the fruit from this nursery had very little or no contamination from the radioactive elements.
My understanding is the EM-1 helps establish good fungal and bacterial presence in the soil and on the leaves which forms a sort of protection from the radioactive elements. Instead of taking in the raw element as ions, the fungi is preventing the plant from taking them in as the plants are relying on the fungi to provide them with what nutrients they need, and not just taking them from the soil.
#grownostr #permaculture #gardening #plantstr