Understanding Plants - Plant Ecology - Chapter Four, Part Two - Mineral Repositors and Mycorrhizae

Welcome to Chapter Four, Part Two. where we will continue on our quest to understand our floral friends, looking at how they relate to each other, other organisms in the ecosystem, and the soils around them.

During part one we looked at Plant Relationship with Other Plants and Organisms and Nitrogen Fixing Plants, in part two we take a close look at Mineral Repositors and how Mycorrhizae and plants interact.

You can find the preceding course material over in the Bloom Room here.

The idea behind mineral repository is simply to saturate the entire soil profile with as many active roots as possible while avoiding harmful competition between plants. To understand why and how this is beneficial it helps to have a basic understanding of the way plants feed. So here is a short, super simplified overview.

Plants create sugars from sunlight through photosynthesis—a chemical process that uses light, carbon dioxide, and water to produce sugars and oxygen. …