Episode 251: mycorrhizal fungi

A microscopic view of a root colonised by mycorrhizal fungi. Photograph: Augusto Kaminski Polo, Shutterstock.

Transcript

EPISODE 251: MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI

Jane Perrone 0:00:16.4

Hello and welcome to On the Ledge podcast, and as The Jam once said, 'This week we're going underground' to talk about mycorrhizal fungi! Apologies to any listeners of my age or older who may now have the song 'Going Underground' by The Jam as their earworm for the day!

As houseplant growers, we tend to be all about the leaves, but so much fascinating stuff is happening under the surface of our substrates - not least mycorrhizal fungi. I'm joined by plant community ecologist, Dr Sarah Emery, to find out all about these incredible fungi. Plus, I answer a question about a very chilly jade plant. But first, a soupcon of housekeeping. There's been a New Year's rush of new patrons, including Jackie who became a Crazy Plant Person, Geoff and Elena, who became Superfans, and Kay, who upgraded from Ledge End to Superfan.

Apologies, that's actually the phone ringing in the office! And now I've got to wait for somebody in the house to answer it. Hang on. There we go!

Other news from me: my audiobook of 'The Allotment Keeper's Handbook' is now available not only on Spotify, and on my own website, but also on Audible, so if you have an Audible subscription, use one of your credits to listen to my dulcet tones talking about growing food! Just Google 'Jane Perrone Audible' and you'll find me! You can also listen to the podcast on there too. And I've signed off the final proofs for 'Legends of the Leaf.' It's coming close, guys! So thank you to those of you who've already pre-ordered it on your online bookshop of choice, and those of you who've pledged. If you'd like to frequent your local bookshop, then do go in and ask for it. You can ask in your local bookshop to pre-order a copy in. It should be possible. If you need to know the ISBN number, you can look that up on the Amazon site, or if you want to me to tell you, just let me know and I'll tell you what the ISBN number is and you should be able to order it from your local, friendly, independent bookshop too!

On with the motley and it's time to talk mycorrhizal fungi - an often neglected part of gardening. So these are just fungi that team up with plants and form associations with those plant's roots, helping each other out. The plant benefits and the fungus benefits. But in connection with the world of houseplants, there is so much we still don't know about mycorrhizal fungi. Dr Sarah Emery of the University of Louisville in the US has made it her mission to really investigate what's going on with these incredible fungi. So let's dive in to the subterranean world and find out more.

Sarah Emery 0:03:46.9

I'm Sara Emery. I'm a plant ecologist and professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, United States.

Jane Perrone 0:03:56.1

Thank you so much for joining me, Sarah. This is a topic that people have been asking for, for literally years on the podcast because I think, as houseplant people, we hear about mycorrhizal fungi but we don't really understand what they are or what they're doing. So let's start with the very basics. What are mycorrhizal fungi?

Sarah Emery 0:04:17.0

Sure. So mycorrhizal fungi are a group of fungi that form associations with plant roots. There's lots of different kinds of mycorrhizal fungi -- fungi that associate strictly with orchids, fungi that associate with plants in the blueberry family, fungi that associate with trees. A lot of my work is focused on fungi, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, fungi that associate with a wide variety of plants. We generally define mycorrhizae as mutualisms, so an association between plants and fungi where both the plant and the fungus benefit, and that separates mycorrhizae from other types of fungi that can associate with plant roots, such as pathogens or commensals that are just hanging out in the plants.

Jane Perrone 0:05:09.1

What I'm fascinated by is this mutually beneficial relationship between the fungi and the plant. Do we have any idea how that has evolved, or how that's come about? Are there lots of things that we still don't understand about the way these relationships work?

Sarah Emery 0:05:26.0

The mycorrhizal relationship is believed to be a really ancient relationship and was actually important in the transition of plants to land millions of years ago. So there's evidence in the fossil record of these fungal relationships with plant roots, and so they're really critical for the story of plant evolution.

Despite that, there's a lot that we don't know. Mycorrhizal fungi, or the group of mycorrhizal fungi I study, is not extremely diverse. There's only about two to three hundred species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and, despite that, we know very little about the function of individual species. For a long time, ecologists thought that mycorrhizal fungal species were generalists. So, a plant could associate with lots of different species of mycorrhizal fungi, mycorrhizal fungi could associate with lots of different species of plants and were generally beneficial. But we're starting to find out that different species of mycorrhizae can serve very different roles in a plant, and some species are more beneficial than others, for different plants. So there's a lot of very species-specific interactions that are still not very well understood.

Jane Perrone 0:06:52.1

You've already mentioned orchids there. I know that orchids have a particular specialist relationship with mycorrhizal fungi. Are there other houseplants or groupings that have specific relationships with certain mycorrhizal fungi? I'm thinking of our houseplants in our house. I'm imagining that maybe, in our homes, those mycorrhizal fungi aren't necessarily present in that substrate that's come from the nursery? So presumably they can survive without these fungal relationships?

Sarah Emery 0:07:25.5

Orchids are a very good example of a group of plants that absolutely need their mycorrhizal partners. The seeds of orchids are too small to germinate successfully without their fungal partner, but most other plants are not that strongly dependent on their mycorrhizal fungal partner.

So, again, the group that I study, the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can associate with 80 per cent of all flowering plants, and that's across almost all plant families. So there's only just a couple of plant families that don't form associations with mycorrhizal fungi. Probably the best well-known family is Brassicaceae, or the mustard family. If you're a gardener and growing broccoli, or cauliflower, or mustards, they do not form associations with mycorrhizae at all, and there's a couple of other families that don't form very many associations with mycorrhizae, but most flowering plants do form associations, beneficial associations, with mycorrhizal fungi.

However, most of them don't absolutely need mycorrhizae. We view mycorrhizae more or less as a bio fertiliser, so the fungus can help with nutrient uptake and water uptake, which basically, by acting as extra roots for plants, the hyphae of the fungus can really explore the soil a lot better than plant roots. Hyphae are a lot smaller than roots and so can really take advantage of burrowing around in the soil to access nutrients that other plants wouldn't necessarily be able to access on its own. But again, that's not an obligate relationship. Most plants can survive just fine without their fungal partner.

Jane Perrone 0:09:26.9

What's interesting about that is that it occurs to me that, in the situation of having a houseplant in your home, where, let's face it, it's in quite an unnatural situation, there could be a lot of benefits to giving the plant that extra boost of giving it that mycorrhizal fungal relationship. But it's interesting to know that they can live without them too.

I know you've been carrying out a lot of research in this area. Can you tell me a bit about the research project you've been working on and what you've been discovering?

Sarah Emery 0:09:57.0

I'm a plant ecologist, and so my main research interests, academically, are focused on understanding plant diversity and interactions between plant species and other species in the environment. A lot of my work has focused on plant fungus interactions and a lot of different systems. I've worked a lot in ecosystems and agricultural systems and prairies, but I've recently expanded some of that long-term work, or long term interest I've had in plant fungus relationships, to look at foliage plants that are important for horticulture, for indoor houseplants.

This was through a grant that was funded through the National Horticulture Foundation here in the US. They provided funding to look at the potential benefits of mycorrhizal fungi for indoor houseplants that are valued for foliage, rather than for flowers, or fruit production, or other sorts of growth benefits.

I've recently wrapped up a project that was about two years long, looking at a lot of different mycorrhizal species and how they associate with three main types of indoor plants. I've done a lot of work with Aglaonemas, or Chinese evergreens, a couple of different species of Sedums and a few different varieties of Coleus. I chose those species because they represent a really wide variety of the of the types of houseplants that we have. So all the way from racy, tropical foliage plants, like Aglaonemas, to more drought-tolerant desert species, like those Sedums, and then Coleus I was interested in because it's a really common outdoor bedding plant, but also can be grown as an indoor plant, in the mint family. So, a really wide variety of growth forms for plants, and then looking at how different mycorrhizal species could benefit growth of those plants.

And then, secondarily, I was also really interested in whether these mycorrhizae could influence leaf colouration. We know that mycorrhizae can act as bio fertilisers, just generally increasing growth of plants, but there's also some species that we believe act as more bio protectors, and so triggering immune responses in plants which could help with plant resistance to herbivores or pathogens. But one part of a plant's immune response is the production of chemicals like anthocyanins that can help with plant resistance to herbivores, but also, we value as a nice red colour in leaves.

And so the idea with the project was to see whether there were different species of mycorrhizal fungi that could influence growth versus influence leaf colour in these plants.

Jane Perrone 0:13:05.8

From the point of view of the horticulture industry, where is this going? Is this something that you can see being used to change the characteristics of plants, or to make them grow better in our homes?

Sarah Emery 0:13:19.3

I do think that it's a growing industry. In the US there's probably 50 or so different commercial products that include mycorrhizal fungal species as bio fertilisers for all sorts of plants, whether in your garden or houseplants, and probably about the same, or even more, products in Europe. And there's a lot of interest in knowing whether diversity of these mycorrhizal fungi are important.

The really common products that are on the market tend to only have one mycorrhizal species, a species that's known as Rhizophagus intraradices, sometimes called Glomus intraradices, which is kind of a really hyper-common mycorrhizal species that's really pretty easy to propagate and grow. That's the number one species that's included in most commercial inoculum. But I think companies are realising that diversity of fungal species might be important, and so they're starting to include a lot more diverse mixtures of mycorrhizae. Sometimes that's well thought out; sometimes it isn't.

So, for example, there are some commercial products that include a group of mycorrhizal fungi called ectomycorrhizal fungi that are really important in forests and for trees, but most houseplants do not form associations with ectomycorrhizal fungi. So, there's really no reason to have that in a product.

So, despite the fact there's all of these products on the market, there's very little in the way of scientific tests of those products in terms of their efficacy and effects on plant growth, or fruit production, or flower production. And, in fact, there's been, just kind of as a note of warning, a scientific paper recently published earlier this year that showed that about 80 per cent of all the commercial products in Europe didn't have viable propagules, so were basically dead.

So I think on one side, there needs to be a lot of quality control for companies that are interested in mycorrhizae as an inoculum, and then also more research on the potential benefits of including multiple species of mycorrhizal fungi in an inoculum.

Jane Perrone 0:15:57.7

That is interesting. I guess it's a question of, well, asking questions and reading the small print. Do these products usually tell you what they actually include in terms of different strains, or is not something you're going to read on the packet?

Sarah Emery 0:16:14.8

So, in the US, anyway, the packets are labelled with the species that are present in the products and usually some measure of the number of propagules, but if you're not familiar with the scientific names of the fungi, a lot of products also contain some bacteria. Some products contain yeast. It can be hard, I would think, for the consumer to know what the purpose of all of those micro-organisms are in a product.

Jane Perrone 0:16:58.8

Back to my chat with Dr Sarah Emery soon, but now it's time for Question of the Week which comes from Penelope, via the medium of Instagram. This one strikes close to home because Penelope's mum has been in tears on the phone because a 20 year old jade tree, that's Crassula ovata, also known as the money plant, has totally collapsed. It lives in an unheated conservatory and had been okay in there for a long time, but suddenly seems to have collapsed in the cold snap that we had here in the UK before Christmas. The picture from Penelope looks pretty miserable. The stems are all keeled over and very droopy, so Penelope is wondering what to do next. It's been brought inside and Penelope is wondering if a big chop back is what's needed.

Penelope, I can speak from experience on this one because I accidentally left my beautiful Crassula ovata Hummels Sunset in my greenhouse during the cold snap. It shouldn't have been there. It was way too cold out there. It's not heated, and I just forgot to bring it in. Quite simply, no other excuses other than perimenopause or brain fog. Thank you hormones! So that plant is looking a lot worse than your plant actually. I'll put pictures of both the plants in the show notes.

Penelope's mum's plant is definitely bigger than mine, and I have greater hopes for it than I do my plant. I think my plant's gone. I felt at the very base of the stem, and that has frozen solid so I think the chances of my plant coming back are small, but I'm still going to give it a go.

What would I recommend for Penelope though? I would say this plant needs to be given time. It definitely needs a big chop back and I would definitely remove any parts that are distinctly mushy. It's just a question of cutting it back until you see material that doesn't look like it's been frozen and hasn't turned to mush, and then waiting and hoping that it will resprout.

I think looking at the picture, Penelope, I think there's a good chance that it will resprout. It doesn't look as if it's been badly affected, or certainly not as badly affected as my plant. So there is hope if you've got a plant that's totally mushy, even if there are some roots, they might have survived, so it's worth giving it a few weeks or months to resprout. Certainly, with this plant, I would say cut back. You could cut all the foliage off it and there's still a good chance it will resprout, Penelope. So all is not lost!

Mine, on the other hand, I think is probably done, but I'm still going to give it a whirl because I don't want to lose that plant. I did lose a few things, a few cacti and succulents, a couple of things that I wasn't expecting to lose, like an Opuntia monacantha, which I'd assumed was going to be tougher than it actually was, but I think even that, if I cut that back to the base, the base I think will probably still be okay.

So, with these succulents that have been hit by unexpected cold conditions, if that foliage has been completely frozen most of the time, that means it's game over. I've got my beautiful Echinopsis subdenudata. That's happened to that plant. It's sort of frozen solid and now it's defrosting and it's gone mouldy and mushy, so that one's going in the bin. This is hard to deal with when you're a houseplant owner, but I couldn't bring everything into the house. My brain wasn't working properly to remember what needs to be brought in, so I just have to live with it. It's hard. There are going to be people who have had these kinds of losses and it's tough, but give things a chance to come back. And this is a reason, as I say, to make sure that you do take cuttings of absolutely everything. I did have a small cutting of that Hummel Sunset, so the plant will live on.

So, whatever you do, take cuttings of the plants you love. It's so important. So I hope that's okay, Penelope, and that your plant revives. Do let me know how it goes and what happens and if you've suffered terrible losses, do let me know. I would love to help you out with any of those problems you're having. Plants are incredibly resilient, so don't give up hope for your plants if they do suffer some cold damage. And do listen back to the 'What to do with a dead houseplant' episode, where I talk more about how to tell whether a plant really is dead or not.

I'll put the link to that in the show notes under the Q&A section. And if you've got a question from The Ledge, do drop me a line ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com

Now, let's return to all matters fungal.

Is it a case of 'Well, okay, you're better off, rather than buying these products, making the soil environment...' the phrase that's coming to my mind is 'Build it and they will come.' Is mycorrhizal fungi going to turn up in your substrate if you just make the conditions right, or is that only something that can ever happen in the actual ecosystem, when the plant's growing in its native soils?

Sarah Emery 0:22:27.0

Yeah, that's a great question. I do think that houseplants represent a unique soil environment for plants, or indoor pots, because they do tend to be much more sterile than outdoor soils would be. The sterile potting mixes, or the soil-less potting mixes, don't typically have mycorrhizae in them, naturally, and so I do think there could be an argument for these amendments to be really important for houseplants under certain conditions, as opposed to plants in your outdoor garden or bedding plants. Mycorrhizae are pretty ubiquitous, so unless you have just really terrible soils, I would expect mycorrhizae to be almost everywhere, at least some of the really common species, to be in almost all soil types.

My main research is actually in Great Lakes sand dune ecosystems and those are really sterile, almost pure sand soils and we still find mycorrhizae in those systems. So mycorrhizae do get around pretty easily, but for indoor plants that are growing in commercial potting mixes, soil-less potting mixes, I wouldn't expect mycorrhizae to be in those mixes, and so it would make sense to potentially add mycorrhizae to those indoor plants.

Jane Perrone 0:23:56.2

It's interesting because, here in the UK certainly, I don't hear, or up until recently I've heard very little about mycorrhizae in houseplants, but I've heard a lot about mycorrhizae in things like roses, like, products specifically for things like roses. Your argument is very convincing that, actually, if you're going to target, yourself, in terms of where to put mycorrhizal products, houseplants would seem to be the one, for the reasons you've just explained. It is so interesting.

One of my other worries though with this, is that somebody is going to be putting some mycorrhizal fungi products in with their houseplants and then following up with a systemic for thrips or something, and is going to damage - basically wipe out what they've just added by using some other product that is not going to be friendly to the mycorrhizal fungi. Is that an issue?

Sarah Emery 0:24:56.2

Insecticide shouldn't affect mycorrhizae. I would say that any sort of systemic fungicides, so they're having some sort of root rot problem, or some sort of fungal pathogen where you would be applying a systemic fungicide to the soil, that would definitely kill mycorrhizae. But insecticides shouldn't. Fertilisers are interesting. I think this is maybe one reason why we don't see widespread benefits of mycorrhizae in houseplants, is because we tend to baby our houseplants and give them lots of fertiliser and water. So the benefits that mycorrhizae would provide plants in a more natural system, in terms of access to hidden nutrients and access to water that roots have problems finding, those benefits are not necessarily as important inside. So unless you tend to forget to water your plants, or don't fertilise very often, you might not see very dramatic effects of mycorrhizal fungi in terms of growth.

I will say, I think we don't know very much at all about the bio protector side of mycorrhizal fungi. So I think there could be an argument for mycorrhizal fungi helping to protect plants against things like thrips, or mealy bugs, or other insects, pests. That's hopefully the next step for my own research, is to look at those, not just bio fertiliser effects, but bio protector effects, but I do think that could be important in houseplants.

Jane Perrone 0:26:46.4

And presumably that, sort of, could be a massive boon for the houseplant production industry, if they can add mycorrhizal fungi that can help with those issues?

Sarah Emery 0:26:57.0

Yes. And there's certainly been some work with things like roses and other bedding plants, showing that mycorrhizae can increase resistance to pests and diseases in outdoor settings, but as far as I know, nothing has been done indoors with foliage plants.

Jane Perrone 0:27:19.2

Yeah, that's interesting. Perhaps this is coals to Newcastle, as they say? I don't know if you have many houseplants at home, but has your research impacted on how you treat plants yourself?

Sarah Emery 0:27:29.6

I feel guilty about this, but no, I haven't!

Jane Perrone 0:27:33.1

Don't feel guilty about killing plants, if that's what you're about to say! I have got a lot of plants, but I still kill plants!

Sarah Emery 0:27:43.6

I have a ton of houseplants, but I tend to have this kind of Darwinian approach to houseplants. So if they can survive in my house, that's great, and then if they die, then I just replace it with something that can survive.

Jane Perrone 0:27:56.6

Absolutely! Me too! Me too! But I wonder whether there's any correlation between mycorrhizal fungi and success, as a houseplant, species that particularly have a particularly good range of mycorrhizal fungi relationships? Whether that makes them better houseplants? I don't know. I'm slightly riffing here, but I'm thinking there's certain characteristics that really good houseplants seem to have and share in common and I'm just wondering if a really rich mycorrhizal fungus world might be one of those things? But I'm sure that's another 10 years of research right there!

Sarah Emery 0:28:34.4

I don't think we know the answer to that. I think there's reason to expect that some groups of plants might do better, like a lot of grasses are really strongly mycorrhizal. Asters, but those don't tend to be very typical houseplants, so it might be actually that the really common houseplants thrive because they aren't dependent on those mycorrhizal relationships.

Jane Perrone 0:29:02.8

Yeah. I was just going to say the actual reverse of what I was saying is probably true, that the ones that don't need that really, really specialist, when they can only survive with this particular strain is probably the way the way it goes. I mean, are there more things that you want to discover in your research? Questions that remain unanswered generally about mycorrhizal fungi?

Sarah Emery 0:29:27.1

Yes! I think there's a lot of different ways to go. With regards to houseplants, I am definitely interested in those bio protector effects and whether species that are not typically included in these soil amendment products might be better protectors for plants, and then, more broadly, my research lab looks at mycorrhizae in a lot of different systems. One of my students is interested in mycorrhizal fungi in agricultural soils, and interactions between biochar, as soil amendments, and mycorrhizae and there's some evidence that adding both biochar and mycorrhizae to soils can improve soil carbon, soil organic matter.

And then I'm really interested in interactions between fungi above and below ground, and so I have a research project looking at what we've called the microbiome. We talk about the human microbiome in terms of the bacteria that live inside of us, but plants have the same micro-organism inside them, but they are dominated by fungi, and so: the microbiome. We know very little about whether fungi that live in leaves interact at all with the fungi that live in plant roots, and whether the plant has control in the types of fungi that colonise plant roots versus leaves, and whether there's any communication going on between above- and below-ground fungi.

So that's the big picture for my research in lots of different systems where the houseplant part is smaller and focused mostly on below-ground interactions.

Jane Perrone 0:31:19.7

Well, that's fascinating. I'd never really thought about that, but of course I'm imagining there are fungi roaming - or perhaps that's the wrong word? - but roaming around plants above ground. Again, it's a whole other world that we need to remember when we're thinking about our houseplants. It's not just the springtails and the fungus, that larvae underground and the mycorrhizal fungi - it's all going on! This is why plants are so fascinating!

Well, I hope you'll come back on the show when you've discovered more on this issue because I want to know the answer to that! But it is really fascinating to hear about this hidden world and this relationship between fungi and houseplants, so thank you so much for sharing that with us, Sarah!

Sarah Emery 0:32:09.6

Thanks for having me on!

Jane Perrone 0:32:16.8

Thank you so much to Dr Sarah Emery. Do check out the show notes for useful information and links to Dr Emery's research. That's all for this week's show. I will be back next Friday with another cornucopia of houseplant delights, just for you! Until then, I hope your houseplants continue to bring you great joy. Bye!

The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by the Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids, by Komiku, and Oh Mallory, by Josh Woodward. All tracks are licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.

---

Become a Patron!

Support Me on Ko-fi

I learn more about the incredible relationships between plants and mycorrhizal fungi with the help of plant community ecologist Dr Sarah Emery, and I answer a question about a frozen jade tree.

Orchids rely on specific species of mycorrhizal fungi to germinate their seeds.

This week’s guest

Plant community ecologist Dr Sarah Emery is Professor in the Biology department at the University of Louisville in the US. Her website is here.

Check out the show notes below as you listen…

• Mycorrhizal fungi are a group of fungi that team up with plants by forming mutually beneficial relationships (aka mutualism).

• If you want a general introduction to mycorrhizal fungi in relation to gardening, this RHS page is a good place to start.

• There are many different types of mycorrhizal fungi, and each species tends to associate with particular types of plants, eg trees, orchids and blueberries. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are ones that associate with a wide range of plants: there are about 200-300 species of these: this is where Dr Emery’s specialism lies.

• We still have a lot to learn about the roles individual species can play in terms of plant interactions. We do know that orchids rely on specific species of mycorrhizal fungi to germinate their seeds, but most plants do not completely rely on their mycorrhizal fungi for survival: so your houseplants can survive in a pot without the addition of mycorrhiza. In fact there are plants that do not form associations with mycorrhizal fungi, such as Brassicaceae (the mustard family).

• You can read more on Dr Emery’s research project on the fungal ecology of houseplants here: she’s specifically been looking at various Sedum, coleus and Aglaonema species.

• Mycorrhiza acts as biofertilisers by helping plants in the uptake of water and nutrients: this is why they are starting to be marketed as ‘boosters’ for plants. There’s not a lot of testing of these products in terms of their efficacy.

• Although one study published in 2022 showed 80% of commercial mycorrhizal fungi products in Europe did not contain viable propagules - in other words they were effectively dead. You can read that paper here.

• Houseplant substrates (Ie commercial potting mixes) tend to be much more sterile than soil outside - and tend not to include mycorrhizal fungi. If you do add mycorrhiza products, do not add any kind of fungicide as this will kill off your newly formed fungi.

---

Jane's rather dead jade tree (scroll down for a pic of Penelope’s plant). Photograph: Jane Perrone.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Penelope got in touch about her mother’s 20-year-old jade tree, Crassula ovata, which has collapsed. It has been growing for years in a cool conservatory but has suddenly drooped after a severe cold spell in December.

I sympathise as I left my own jade tree outside in an unheated greenhouse that same cold snap: if you look at both pics, I think Penelope’s mum’s plant has a better chance than mine. If you are in this situation, check the stems and seek out ones that are not soft and mushy, and trim back to a little way into this undamaged tissue. It should start to resprout from these points come spring.

In the case of my plant, the whole thing has been frozen, so I doubt it will resprout. The OP’s plant, on the other hand, I think has a good chance of recovery, but it may need a good cutback so it will lose some size. Crassula ovata on the whole starts to suffer once the temperature consistently drops below 5-10C (41-50F), so they will suffer in an unheated greenhouse in the UK and other temperate climates.

Wondering how to tell if a plant is really dead? More info on that in On The Ledge episode 239.

Penelope’s plant … it does not look as terminal as mine!

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue.

---

---

HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.

Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.

• The Crazy Plant Person tier just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the show you love.

• The Ledge End tier gives you access to two extra episodes a month, known as An Extra Leaf, as well as ad-free versions of the main podcast on weeks where there’s a paid advertising spot, and access to occasional patron-only Zoom sessions.

• My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.

If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!

CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and  Oh Mallory by Josh Woodward.