I recommend you research "soil food web", it will give you a better basic understanding of the roles fungus, bacteria and other organisms play on, not only plant health, but soil. Dr.Elaine Ingham explains the soil food web very well.

Note: There are expensive mycorrhizae fungi inoculates, and various inoculates that are not necessary. All the "inoculates" and life the plant needs is in "good" soil. Save your money, you do not need any expensive products to have a successful garden. All you need is time, research, and some muscle.

It would help to know if you intend to grow in containers or in ground? If in containers, you just might want to buy inoculate...

I have my veggie area as two long mounded beds with sloped drainage between them. I bought an innoculant that I used two years ago. Last year I didn't use anything else. This is in no til except for digging up root crops. Last year everything did much better. I cover the beds in the fall with leaves. Hopefully the soil web is starting to improve.

". This is in no til except for digging up root crops. Last year everything did much better. I cover the beds in the fall with leaves. Hopefully the soil web is starting to improve."

Just keep researching and building your knowledge.. You are doing great! I do no till as well, I advise you to keep doing no till, although some people on this forum will beat you up for giving "blanket statements" or anystatement without knowing your exact location.

Think about keeping the leaves as a permanent mulch. It could be a nice habitat for the food web. But be careful, some people find that leaves prevent air flow to the soil, etc.. I personally always have my garden covered with organic matter, mainly leaves and grass clippings. Leaves by itself take long to decompose, mixed with grass to give the proper carbon/nitrogen ration, it will decompose in a quarter of the time, leaving rich topsoil.

When you get tired of the soil food web, start looking into cover crops/ green manures.

That is an excellent technique, similar to what is called Lasagna bedding.

Fungi and bacteria are essential parts of the Soil Food Web, but there are also those that are not good and can cause diseases. Your job as the gardener is to make the soil into a good healthy soil that can support the many fungi and bacteria that are part of that
Soil Food Web.
Seed inoculants, bacteria, for the legumes help them set Nitrogen.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Biology Primer

I now live in centeral Missouri in a small town that slowly de-evolving. There is mostly commercial agriculture around here. I considered going to a forested area close to here to get some of my own innoculants. After looking at the Soil Biology Primer if wonder if that is a good idea. I guess without having access to the tools to check the inhabitants of my soil food web I can only guess what is there.
I really hoped that someone could help me with an agency or school who could help me actually check my own soil and add the components that are missing. Any help in this area would be appreciated.

"I considered going to a forested area close to here to get some of my own inoculants"

Good thinking! Did you know your garden can get inoculated by just a bug landing on your plant or soil? Elaine Ingham actually recommends you do inoculate your soil, however she does not recommend putting the raw inocate in the garden, because you could possible bring pathogens as well. Instead, she advises you to put the inoculates in the compost, so the process will kill any pathogens, and keep all the beneficials. Otherwise, you are kind of taking risks. So basically I'm saying, if you go to a forest and take a shovelful or two of topsoil, add that to your compost and then add the finished compost to your garden. However, there are exceptions, like mycorrhiza inoculates bought at the store, those are almost guaranteed pathogen free, and they must come in contact with the plant root to form a relationship. If you go buy a $50 jar of mycorrhiza fungi inoculate and sprinkle some on your conpost, it does no good, you are wasting money..

" really hoped that someone could help me with an agency or school who could help me actually check my own soil and add the components that are missing. Any help in this area would be appreciated."

Dr.Elaine Ingham had a very informative website a year or so ago called "soilfoodweb.com", she explains that she gave the site over to the "business people", so there is no information on it like it used to, but if you go to the website, you could send them a sample of your soil and they will examine it with a microscope. From what i remember, it's pretty costly, and I wonder what she means by giving it to the business people.. I'm pretty sure she still supports the website and encourages you to send in samples, but then again I wonder what she meant by giving it to the business people.. I would hate for you to waste your money, i think it's around $100 or so, maybe more..

Anyways, I'm pretty sure there are books/videos were Ingham shows you how to examine your own soil under a microscope, however the microscope aren't cheap neither, I think around $500.

I remember hearing Elaine say that you really don't need a test if you don't want one, you could just keep making variations of different compost to ensure you have a diversity of life. I also remember reading on soilfoodweb.com that if you see a worm or a spider, your food web must be complete.. But I don't know how much i believe that..

The link below gives links to most Electronic Sites of Botany, Plant Biology and Plant Science Journals.
http://www.e-journals.org/botany/

Often when you get to a specific journal they will have available a free e-mail notification program to tell you the table of contents and the abstracts of the new issues. You can also often use their search function to look up abstracts in previous issues on subjects that you are interested in. For this thread the journal Mycorrhiza
may be of particular interest.
http://link.springer.com/journal/572/

If you are interested in a microscope, E-Bay often has Doctor's and university microscopes from the 50s that sell for almost nothing (however watch the shipping charge). The link below is an example of one available now. The microscope can also be used to try to motivate your children/grandchildren to consider a biology/botany major. There is a free pubic domain computer program, MICAM available that utilizes a web cam to look at and measure microscope images.
http://science4all.nl/?Microscopy_and_Photography:MICAM

Web cams are also available very inexpensively from E-Bay. I recommend replacing the old time (usually very hot) microscope light source with a battery operated LED light source (also available on E-Bay or many local stores for only a couple dollars).

Here is a link that might be useful: example E-Bay microscope

The wee buggers that make up the Soil Food Web, from the earthworms to the bacteria and fungi, need organic matter to live. Provide the organic matter and they will come and no inoculant will be needed. If the soil does not have adequate levels of organic matter no amount of inoculant will help because the Soil Food Web will not have the environment they need to live in.