Walking on King Stropharia beds?

Wanted to say welcome to Peter McCoy! One of the inspirations of 2016 being my year of mushrooms. I have committed that this years one new addition to the homestead will be a serious attempt at mushroom cultivation.

Peter, Please get your book back in stock! As much as I am hoping to be one of the lucky winners... I tried to order it a few weeks ago, only to be told it was out of stock for an indefinite period of time.

My question is about walking on King Stropharia patches. I've seen a ton of information about easily cultivating this outdoor species. We started with some spawn last fall, mixed with wood chips and it overwintered in large containers over the winter. I checked on them a few days ago and they seem to be nearly fully colonized below the surface. I am planning on dividing some of those containers to inoculate more wood chips to mulch around some new tree plantings. We get chips from a local tree service and have access to a lot of chips. I have not seen any specific references to walking on wood chip beds after inoculating. I don't want to damage the mycelial formation... but I would also like to start using more mulch around the property, and will need to walk on some of those areas.

Thanks
-Brian

Hi Brian
Congratulations on amplifying the Stropharia! Its a great species to work and very forgiving. That said, I would suggest spreading the spawn to a variety of microniches and zones. It is a great mushroom to use in the pathways of your garden, for example. Here, it can be walked on no problem, but it will likely only fruit on the sides of the path. If you plant other patches that are not so disturbed it should produce clusters across the substrate surface. Be sure to keep the patches fed with neew organic material. Use a wide range of substrates and manybe dedicate a small patch as the experiemental one, which you feed the more questionable substrate. This mushroom will eat most anything, fresh or old.

Have fun!
Peter

PS
Yes, the book is getting printed! Will be back in the coming weeks!