The value of methanol on the leaf surface that comes to my head is 25mM, this is not an awful lot, but it will influence the community, so it could be goot to add it. Yeasts usually will lower the gross pH. These yeasts stick around in flowers and on fruits in larger population sizes. So what we have got to try is a high sugar environment if we specifically want to enrich them – probably back to the Yeast recipe from KNF.

We have probably 3 weeks until first frost. I will have a look at the roots then. I got some lessons this year, how sensitive a system may be to disturbance, so I will restrain my curiosity until then. I also want to know in which direction the roots have aligned.

No, silicon and biochar are not directly related, but what the link is, is electron and charge handling and storage. I have the feeling that the plant still is at a fraction of the speed it could have with this photosynthetic apparatus.

I have another curiosity, that makes me rethink a lot about roots. I put a passionflower and a basil cutting into a glass (this was planned as interim) and unlike usually, I put in water that I brought from a friends house. It is their own well and it has a good taste and texture. I was reluctant as I expected the cutting to rot, as I have had big problems to root cuttings with our tap water and I attributed it to spoilage microbes in our kitchen-cloths. It pulled roots within less of a week (not the passionflower) and I saw root hairs. First time I have ever seen roothairs on a water submersed cutting. This fellow is growing happily. A 20cm shoot in 4 weeks – in water + the microbial zoo. I saw bacteria (not many Bacillus type though) and a mixture of protists. What from? This is usually the length where nutrients begin to expire when I see volunteers catching in gravel. I am curious to see how long this fellow carries on.

I had to fill up the water once (this time I took rain water :-)) and the lateral roots grow 100% vertically upwards. It looks like a mangrove forest. So they must be interested more in O2 than gravity fro rhizophagy.

So I assume as you do, that most of the photosynthate of Mr. tomato goes into the microbial community, nutrient acquisition and growth – instead of a deposit. But this is only speculation.