Which problem are you solving?
Most people arrive with a symptom rather than a crop. This page routes the common ones to the part of the system that answers them.
The three products are usually described in the order they were developed. That is not the order in which anyone meets them. What follows is the same system arranged the other way round — by what is wrong with the ground.
| The symptom | What answers it |
|---|---|
| Water is short, or an abstraction charge has made it expensive | AridGrow mycorrhiza builds the root system that makes a low-water regime survivable |
| Salt is concentrating in the root zone each season | Zander Humus buffers it — at least nine years, on the Russian and Ukrainian studies |
| Sand that will not hold water or fertiliser | Zander Humus holds water at about 200% of its own volume, and holds fertiliser with it |
| Too many transplants dying in the first two summers | Humus plus mycorrhiza at planting; one treatment in the life of a tree |
| Chemical fertiliser costs rising, soil getting worse | Mycorrhiza makes soluble nutrients in the rooting zone and leaves glomalin behind |
| Ground contaminated with metals, hydrocarbons or radioactivity | Zander Humus captures dissolved metal by chelation; see the decontamination entry |
| An existing planting that has never done well | Most species can be retro-treated where growth is poor |
Not enough water
This is the constraint that brings most people here, and the one the was built to test. The honest mechanism is worth stating: the granules do not save water. builds a broad, even root system that can live on infrequent deep watering rather than a daily drip, and it is that regime which uses about a tenth of the water. is set out separately.
Salt
Irrigate a hot soil and the water evaporates; the salt does not. is therefore a problem that compounds every season, and organic matter from peat or farmyard manure does not survive long enough in that ground to hold it off. does, which is what makes a plantation possible on land that has been written off.
Establishment losses
In an orchard or a reforestation programme the largest single cost is replacing what dies in the first two summers. A few percentage points of survival across a seven-million-tree belt is a very large number of trees. covers the planting method; the shows what the root system looks like nine weeks in.
Soil that is getting worse
Nitrate run-off, the acceleration and then collapse of soil biota, and the steady loss of organic matter are well documented, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation has put a fifty-year horizon on conventional agriculture because of them. sets out the alternative: mycorrhiza supplying the plant, and the glyco-protein it leaves behind rebuilding the organic fraction while the crop grows.
Contamination
A separate problem with the same material behind it. takes more than ninety-nine per cent of dissolved heavy metal out of solution, reed beds handle the lighter end, and oily drill cuttings become friable soil in about twelve weeks.
If none of the above quite describes your site, that is worth an email rather than a guess: the answer usually depends on the water source and the salinity figure, and both are things you will already know.
Source — Drafted from the trial reports and technical sheets already cited on this site. Zander Corporation to confirm.
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