Mycorrhizal fungi bomb

I've read somewhere in the topics about soil building this comment by dr Redhawk that it's a good thing to go to the biggest oak in the forest and get some soil from around the stem and add it to your compost. Because oaks, especially old established ones have lots of different kinds of mycorrhizal fungi cooperation going on. Then add this soil to your compost, to inoculate it with those fungi (and bacteria). Which in turn will inoculate the garden when added to the garden soil. I've read in teaming with microbes, diversity in microbe species is a good thing, because if there are "bad" microbes there will always be one other kind praying on them, so a natural equilibrium will keep them in check, figured the same will go for mycelium.
Dr Redhawk's comment stuck with me for a half year, but i didn't come around to doing it until last week, i had to plant some willows close by the creek by the forest to stop erosion and went on a trip into the forest, armed with a bucket and garden trowel. But i didn't see an oak immediately, but a good big healthy looking hornbeam instead, which i visited, had a look around the stem which seemed teaming with mycelium and thought, that won't harm. So i removed some and on went the search for the big oak. But i came across a magnificent looking alder close to the creek with the most beautiful soil around the stem and couldn't resist but to carefully not to damage the tree take a few scoops. Then i got in the mood and saw a huge beech tree which had what looked like a mat of mycelium, which normally i wouldn't have scooped, but they're going to harvest that forest, so in it went. And finally a beautiful big oak.
So i have taken soil from around the stem from four different species trees.
Mixed up all the soil and mycelium in the bucket.
I've filled a bucket with rainwater, no chlorine and added some soil and poured it around the stems of trees, shrubs and berries all over my garden and around the house. I needed many buckets of water.
I've added it to the worm compost pile and to the other pile consisting purely of composting branches, i am planning to start to move the branchy pile around my berries ,shrubs and trees in spring, to create a more fungi dominated soils locally.

Hope i did right with my spontaneous action. Anybody did something similar? Any comments/advice/questions?

Hugo,

I too am fascinated by all things fungal.  Perhaps too fascinated.  I am in the middle of a long term project to break down a bunch of wood chips by using wine cap mushrooms.  I am also interested in eventually adding in an array of healthy microbes to ultimately turn my 12” thick bed of wood chips into a very fine mushroom compost with the appropriate bacteria to boot.

I dream of the perfect microbe mix.  Your idea of getting a few collections from several healthy trees sounds like a perfect way to harvest the desired microbes.  The only downside I could possibly see would be that the microbes you find under a healthy tree might possibly be ideal for that tree but not ideal for a vegetable garden.  

This is my only concern and it may not be valid.  I congratulate you on taking a daring step and having the initiative to try a bold action like this.  Even if your tree soil samples do not contain the perfect mix of microbes you want, I am willing to bet that they still contain a very good selection of microbes for your crops.  I may try this myself.

Good job

Eric

hau Hugo, You did fantastic there. The only thing I can say is should you have the opportunity to repeat your gathering of soils, do so.
The more diversity of life we have in our soil, the better that soil will become and the better all plant life will become.
When we focus on growing the soil, the plants respond by becoming the best their genes will allow, for food plants we get the benefits of our efforts in nutrient density which fuels our bodies and builds our immune system.

Redhawk

hau Eric, building great soil is always an ongoing affair and the plants will love you back for your efforts by giving you great nutritious foods.
The easy way to get the soil as close to the perfect mix of microorganisms for any plant is to add every type you can, then the plant will utilize it's exudates to draw to it the particular organisms it needs to thrive.
Those organisms that aren't needed by one plant may be needed by others and so the great diversity of organisms sorts itself into the biomes by plant needs.
This can't happen unless the diversity is there, so our efforts will always be rewarded.

Redhawk

Redhawk,

Thanks much for your dual replies.  For my own efforts, I am probably overthinking the downsides, but being winter and with no real gardening to do and time on my hands, that’s what I tend to do.  

Thanks for the encouragement and the gentle nudge in the right direction.  I think I will give this a try later this spring after the weather dries a bit and my clay soil stops being gloppy wet sticky slop.  I have a couple of trees in mind that I think would be perfect for this project.

As always you are a fount of gardening wisdom.  Thanks for sharing/teaching.

Eric

One addendum to my earlier post,

I once saw a video about harvesting microbes.  The basic technique was the same—harvest microbes from beneath healthy trees.  The difference though was to instead of taking soil, instead dig a little hole near the tree’s roots and bury a nylon stocking or old pair of pantyhose filled with cooked rice and let it sit.  

The basic idea is that the microbes will grow into the rice in the stocking.  After a few weeks, you pull out the stocking and you have a bunch of rice infused with microbes which can then easily be spread into the gardens.

My plan is to dig my little holes and replace with stockings of rice so that I can harvest some more microbes later.

Please let me know your thoughts,

Eric

Hi Eric, thanks for your reply. What do you mean in your first post, perhaps too fascinated about fungi, no such thing! Them others are not as fascinated as they should be! They're missing out!
About the rice stockings, i wouldn't know? I don't know this method of harvesting microbes. I'd think you'll harvest some microbes and fungi that really like rice, multiply like crazy and then the nematodes,protozoa and arthropods move in to kill off those bacteria and fungi over time. My guess is that you will get some of the inhabitants of that soil food web for sure, which is a good thing, but maybe moving a complete living part of the soil food web will obtain a more diverse,complete and therefore dynamically active part of the soil food web. Which increases the chances of hitting the jackpot, just that specific fungi/microbe your plant really can bond with. Just my thoughts. If it's a proven method for decades in Asia or something, why not?

Hugo,

Pleased you share my neophytes fascination for all things fungal!

The rice-stocking method I saw was on a YouTube channel (wish I could remember now) about harvesting desirable microbes.  I have not tried this, but I was thinking that if you took ground from a little hole near a tree, you may be able to revisit the hole, take the inoculated rice, reapply the microbes and replace the stockings to repeat the cycle.  You are right in that you may get microbes that love rice but are not a representative selection of all of the microbes available, but it would be a method that could be repeated easily enough and certainly do no harm to the parent tree.  I suppose alternatively you could bury some wood in the soil and wait a time for it to get thoroughly infected with microbes and harvest a month, or maybe a year later.  I was just thinking of some medium that could be placed in the hole so that it could then later be easily removed and not keep disturbing the soil in the forest floor.

But again, I am probably overthinking the issue.  I really tend to do that, especially in winter.

Please let me know what you think, Hugo.  It is certainly good to have a person to bounce ideas of of.

Eric

I started slinging mushroom slurries around almost the moment I set foot here. Quadrupled that effort after reading Dr. Redhawk's soil series. That has also revived an old interest in edible mushrooms. Waiting on a particular large broken hickory limb to fall or will help it down soon. Yay nice fungii!!!

Eric, a method of not hurting the tree while multiplying the soil food web is great. We've barely scratched the surface of this science as a human race, there is so much more to discover. And here we are trying to think of ways to applicate this science for the benefit of gardening, growing soils, healthy food and restoring nature one day hopefully.
How about using that hole to plant a tiny tree in there, or a seed? And replant it once it's showing signs of growth, taking the right mycorrhizal fungi along and use it to start a nursury of those trees with the fungi that tree chose. I could give that a try, the smaller trees around "my" oak have been cleared, light won't be a big issue if i plant south. They're waiting a few years for a last growth blast before felling that plot.

Hugo,

I love the Plant-to-Capture idea!  I love the thought of planting in that hole and getting the seed started just enough to get its little roots at least partially colonized.  For my case, the tree that I am thinking about is a large, Red Oak.  Unfortunately, it does cast a lot of shade around the ground by it so whatever I were to plant would have to tolerate heavy shade.  Certainly does not mean it can not be done, it only means we have to think of the way to do it.  I wonder if I could fill the little hole with some sawdust to absorb the microbia, and then remove that sawdust.  I am wondering what type of annual plant that I would grow in a garden readily germinate under a big red oak with heavy shade?  Most annual vegetables that I can think of need a lot of light, but that does not rule out the germinating-to-transplant idea.  Maybe we could plant a simple flower that tolerates both shade and sun and plant that flower into the vegetable garden.  In that way we could draw out the microbes and get them healthy on the roots of the flower which then get transplanted into the garden.  The flower then attracts bees and other beneficial insects.

Also, I was thinking about a variation of my rice stocking plan.  What if we mixed a roughly 50:50 mixture of rice and sawdust or wood chips to put in that hole?  I would think that the rice would have some basic carbohydrates to feed the microbes and the wood in the chips or sawdust could be a more typically appropriate home.  Both together could then be easily moved and redistributed and the original hole again filled and repeat the cycle.

Let me know your thoughts,

Eric

hau Eric, indeed your "capture" idea is good (if you read about creating the preparations of Dr. Steiner they are actually about doing the same thing, just setting on differing bacteria and fungi)

Rice needs to be cooked (sticky rice works the best) and cooled before putting into the stocking. When you bury it leave it for at least a month for best population.
Once you have these bacteria "fish bowls" you can even grow more of the bacteria and fungi in an aerated compost pile or you can grow them in a container (I use fish bowls with cooked barley, wheat and the starter rice), just make sure the mix has enough liquid so it is "soupy" then add air through a fish tank air pump.
Give that apparatus about 3 days to work and you will have a great amendment material for the gardens as well as a starter soup for the next batch. (I have one client that does this using 275 gal. totes for his fish bowls, he goes through 3 of these "containers" at a time, dilutes it down so his three tanks cover 250 acres per 6 containers worth of microbe soup.

Redhawk

Eric,  a mix is better in my opinion, but still i wonder if you get the endo or ecto mycorrhizal fungi to enter a liveless substrate.

How about this approach:
Phase 1.
take a hatchling of the mother Red Oak which popped up closeby, or grow an acorn close by the mother Red Oak, but not in too much shade for it not to get going.
Move child Red Oak with as much soil around the roots as possible into your own garden, where you can keep a keen eye on it.

Phase 2.
After, you have your little space around the roots of mother RedOak which you fill with simple topsoil from the floor under the canopy, and every three month or so you get that out and bury it close to the transplant in your garden. That child RedOak will start to live in an almost copy of the soil food web the mother RedOak is living in.
Then you have a small RedOak that can still receive a lot of light for raising whatever plant/tree/seed you want to raise, at it's foot/stem.

Phase 3.
Then the plant or tree of your choice that you planted in the almost copy of the soil food web of mother RedOak gets to shop around at the foot of child RedOak until it has found what it needs to flourish. When it has really clearly found it's matching mycorrhizal fungi and microbes it will show vigorous growth.
At which point you transplant your tree/plant with the perfect mycorrhizal fungi and microbes to a new place.

Phase 4.
Let it grow and plant seeds of the same kind around it's stem which will therefore in turn be infected by the same perfect mycorrhizal fungi and microbes.
Then plant those around your garden or acres and you'll not only have flourishing new trees, but these new trees will infect the surrounding garden as well with at least a part of the food soil web that the mother RedOak has obtained over all those years.

Redhawk,

I have no idea if I was actually watching Dr. Steiner, but I simply remember a person using an old stocking with cooked rice and burying it under a tree for a period of time and then retrieving it with the microbes intact.  Thanks for the more specific directions.  Out of curiosity, is rice used because it is a supply of carbohydrates and an easy medium for growth.  Could mashed potatoes or just about any grain work in place of the rice?  Why do you use barley and wheat?  Are they simply available or do they have properties you desire?

Thanks in advance, and as always, thanks so much for your help for a neophyte like myself,

Eric

Hugo,

Your idea of planting and moving little trees in near copies of their parent soil is intriguing and ambitious.  Initially I was thinking you were considering an idea that could be accomplished in about one growing season.  I now realize you had much bigger plans.  I may see if I can find a place where I can try this with a little baby Red Oak tree.  Unfortunately, I don't want that baby Oak tree near my garden as it will cast too much shade.  But that's not to say that I can't transplant to establish the microbe copies and then transplant again before the tree grows too big.  It would certainly be nice to grow some really wonderful microbes from which I can tap into when I need.

Do you think you have a place for your 4 phase plan?  I would love to hear how your progress works.  I am going to try some variant of growing the appropriate fungi and I may tailor your method to work in my circumstances.

Please keep me updated on your progress.  I have been told (on this forum of all places) that I obsess about these things too much, but I am extremely pleased to know that there is someone else out there trying much the same experiments I am.

Eric

Eric, this 4 phase plan just came to be just now conversing with you, listening to dr RedHawk. Maybe somebody has already done it, i wouldn't know. I don't have the space really to do it in my garden either, but i have a permaculture project on the go with my neighbor who is a biological farmer. He won't stop me doing this on the plot we are developing.
I'll get seedlings from the big trees. The farmer asked me to plant some more against erosion earlier today. Won't take too long..

Hugo,

The more I think about this, the more intrigued I become.  At the moment I am not certain where I would place this so I will have to give it some thought.  For your project, I really think you should photograph this in order to document your progress.  Perhaps use this thread as a sort of archive of our joint progress.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:
I have no idea if I was actually watching Dr. Steiner, but I simply remember a person using an old stocking with cooked rice and burying it under a tree for a period of time and then retrieving it with the microbes intact.  Thanks for the more specific directions.  Out of curiosity, is rice used because it is a supply of carbohydrates and an easy medium for growth.  Could mashed potatoes or just about any grain work in place of the rice?  Why do you use barley and wheat?  Are they simply available or do they have properties you desire?

I read this or saw this somewhere --  not with cooked rice but raw rice.  So I did it.  I buried a nylon stocking filled with 2 cups of rice next to an established tree and then dug it up in a month.  Every last grain of rice was gone.  Something ate every bit of it.

I would imagine that cooked rice would disappear even faster.  So much for my experiment in transferring fungi by the stocking-full.

if you're looking for microbes, just scoop the soil out (a shovel full would be billions and billions of microbes) and throw it into a cold compost pile.  Mix -- you've got a microbe nursery.

Rudolf Steiner a doctor?  I don't think so.  His concoctions and theories seem to dabble closer to metaphysics than they do to biology.  Perhaps there is some validity to his theories but there doesn't appear to be any empirical scientific basis for them, so I don't believe he was a biologist as we would understand that term today.

I’ve done this with handfuls of my local old growth forest soil, from coniferous and deciduous areas, from drier and wetland soils. It doesn’t seem to take much if using compost tea to inoculate relatively large areas and amounts of compost.

Eric Hanson wrote:Redhawk,

I have no idea if I was actually watching Dr. Steiner, but I simply remember a person using an old stocking with cooked rice and burying it under a tree for a period of time and then retrieving it with the microbes intact.  Thanks for the more specific directions.  Out of curiosity, is rice used because it is a supply of carbohydrates and an easy medium for growth.  Could mashed potatoes or just about any grain work in place of the rice?  Why do you use barley and wheat?  Are they simply available or do they have properties you desire?

Thanks in advance, and as always, thanks so much for your help for a neophyte like myself,

Eric

The rice technique was developed in Japan and Korea and that is why rice was used as the medium for attracting the soil bacteria and fungi. (mycorrhizae live in all soil that has roots, they form a symbiotic relationship with these roots, if they are endotropic species they actually live inside the root cells and these form a bridge with exotropic mycorrhizae then these exotropic species also bridge to soil fungi hyphae completing the highway for the bacteria and other organisms in the microbiome.

What you need is a substance that provides starches that bacteria can convert to sugars, just about anything you can make alcohol through fermentation will work as a "gathering substance".
I use the  mix because I want to gather up as many different species as are in my soil now, using the variety of grains I can be sure to attract around 200 different species of bacteria.
I wrote a thread on Steiner's work and one on how I short cut his preparations (they are in the Redhawk threads list).

Redhawk

Eric and other interested. I've dug out some soil at a big healthy Elder and it had a shoot with roots, which i cut loose and transplanted to my project garden where i've planted it at a wet spot and added the soil. I've dug up some soil from a big Oak and have planted some acornnuts that had sprouted around the tree in a pot which i keep until transplanting in spring. I've got some more soil from Beech and Hornbeam where they're going to clearcut and used this soil all around the new project garden. I've diluted it and poured it all over, also at the oaks that form the edge of the lands, all the herbs, all the cassis berries, all willows, new hugel cultures, the whole lot . So not really a scientific experiment i'm afraid, no control group.

I don't feel good about folk digging up the forest soil for their own personal use.
Even in small amounts, a hole in the soil is like a hole in the bark - a perfect vector for animals/pests/disease organisms.

Trees have enough problems without us nicking off with the soil they have conditioned over decades.

Jondo , i can relate to that, but most of the trees i take soil from are going to be cut down, they're going to replace them with fast straight growing production monoculture douglas or worse, christmas-trees, they will spoil the soil by adding chemicals for growing them which will kill off the existing soil food web, and run off into the stream. I try to duplicate the soil food web to boost our poor soil life to boost my garden, which will promote perma culture ideas.
If a healthy tree dies from me taking a bit of it's soil, that will be sad indeed. Don't forget wildlife itself disturbs soil as well, digging holes, scratching around for food. Branches falling make dents as well. Enough excuses, i'll do my best not to be too loose killing the trees, hope you feel a bit better now.

Eric Hanson wrote:One addendum to my earlier post,

I once saw a video about harvesting microbes.  The basic technique was the same—harvest microbes from beneath healthy trees.  The difference though was to instead of taking soil, instead dig a little hole near the tree’s roots and bury a nylon stocking or old pair of pantyhose filled with cooked rice and let it sit.  

The basic idea is that the microbes will grow into the rice in the stocking.  After a few weeks, you pull out the stocking and you have a bunch of rice infused with microbes which can then easily be spread into the gardens.

My plan is to dig my little holes and replace with stockings of rice so that I can harvest some more microbes later.

Please let me know your thoughts,

Eric

To me using partially cooked rice to gather up the organisms of any microbiome is no different than using the Steiner preparation method, what we are doing is giving that microbiome we want a specific food source so they will come to it (similar to the bait a trapper uses to harvest an animal).
I prefer to use items that aren't used for food, that is just my method. (rice is good, but so is making a flour ball or cornmeal ball, all three attract the same species of bacteria and fungi)
For mycorrhizae, the best method and least, possibly destructive, would be to make use of a tree that has been blown down, the crater created from the uprooting is useful that way and it was done by nature.
I have gathered some really good, viable mycorrhizae this way but you do need to find the downed tree rather soon after the event for best results.

Dr. Redhawk wrote:

you do need to find the downed tree rather soon after the event for best results.

Please narrow "soon"  a little. We had a huge storm ~8 weeks ago and damp weather since. Would the tree that tipped then likely do the job?  It's hung up at 45 degrees, so it will have to be brought down when the weather improves for safety reasons.

Eric Hanson wrote:Hugo,

I too am fascinated by all things fungal.  Perhaps too fascinated.  I am in the middle of a long term project to break down a bunch of wood chips by using wine cap mushrooms.  I am also interested in eventually adding in an array of healthy microbes to ultimately turn my 12” thick bed of wood chips into a very fine mushroom compost with the appropriate bacteria to boot.

Eric

Hi Eric, are the wine caps the same as king stropharia?  I bought some king strophria mycelium to inoculate 3 loads of fresh chips I was lucky enough to have delivered last fall.  I had read that it's best to inoculate with the desired organism ASAP.

It has been a fun project.  I live at 6000 feet elevation, and we're having a cold and snowy winter.  Elaine Ingham says the fasted rate of decomposition occurs under the snow....  I have taken the temperature inside the pile with my long stem compost thermometer.  It has remained steady at 40 degrees, same as my compost pile.

I'll be taking some of the inoculated chips up to my summer place (8000 feet) and spreading it under a small grove of oaks (shady) and near a spring (humidfication), but there is no easy watering system there and we are on a south facing slope, and it can get warm in the summer.

I chose king stropharia because they may fruit under "marginal "conditions.  They are said to have broad temperature and humidity tolerances.

I have no experience with King Stropharia, it's all dreams and conjecture, or to sound more scientific formulating and testing hypotheses.  I wonder, since you are growing (what I think is) the same organism, if you can educate me on them.

Thanks

Eric Hanson wrote:Redhawk,

I have no idea if I was actually watching Dr. Steiner, but I simply remember a person using an old stocking with cooked rice and burying it under a tree for a period of time and then retrieving it with the microbes intact.  Thanks for the more specific directions.  Out of curiosity, is rice used because it is a supply of carbohydrates and an easy medium for growth.  Could mashed potatoes or just about any grain work in place of the rice?  Why do you use barley and wheat?  Are they simply available or do they have properties you desire?

Thanks in advance, and as always, thanks so much for your help for a neophyte like myself,

Eric

The using of rice as a bacteria/fungi collection material developed in Korea and Japan, rice is what they have readily available that has starches that will convert to sugars with partial cooking. (The originator of this technique had read Steiner or was familiar with the studies he used to develop his techniques for farmers.)
If you wanted to use potato you would probably want to add a bit of sugar or add a shot of amylase enzyme to convert starches to sugars.
I grow some barley and wheat and since I use them to brew, I also have some amylase on hand should.

I found this article at Acers USA on this subject that uses some of the methods mentioned.


https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/biological-inoculants-for-soil-health/

Yesterday I've seen a magnificent hazelnut tree in full bloom, since i have planted two hazelnut trees last year that do not seem to really get going i've decided to take some soil from the hazel in bloom and dump it at the bottom of their trunks. As well i've planted a lot of hazel nuts in pots which i gave a mix of water with some of this soil in solution. And the cuttings i took from the hazels at my parents house which give a ridiculous amount annually. I have heard cuttings don't do very well in hazels, but i want to give it a try anyway. These cutting i gave water and hazelnut soil solution.
I have grown and planted siberian pea shrub to create a windbreak, since it is close family of the acacia robinia, it looks alike, flowers similar and both fix nitrogen, I 've visited a huge acacaia robinia for some soil. I've dug it in around the baby plants in the hope, the soil food web that is so beneficial to the acacia robinia will also be beneficial for my siberian pea shrubs. What i had left over i dumped on the compost heap.
Tomorrow i'll get some soil from my established willow to spread around my newly planted willow hedge.

Update, today, i've been for another round in the woods, collected soil from a hazel, an oak , a hornbeam and my fairy tale favorite elder. Funny how different the soils under trees become. I mixed the soils and added source water on the plot where i grow and added it once more to the young trees and shrubs. Hoping they find a nice fungi partner to team up with. I've done the same in my garden, feed this mix to the trees and shrubs. Anyway the soil food webs will add diversity to existing soil food web and become stronger and more stable. The hazel soil i soaked in water and added to my hazel cuttings which are just starting to bud out carefully and my hazelnuts in pots which are starting to break out of the actual nuts and grow roots and a stem. I've got the feeling things have changed in my garden for the better again this year. Denser, vigorous , solid growth. Nothing scientifically proven though, but i see no reason to not continue with the spreading of soil food webs.
Happy growing everyone!

Keep Going! I’m enjoying your updates.

I've done some kind of accidental unscientific experiment once more. My mother has been nosing through my cuttings section and saw that i had planted acorns. So when she and her husband were in the forest and saw some young oak trees she transplanted them. They had a head start. Mine where smaller, but well adjusted so i took them out of shade into half shade two month ago, hers i left there because they didn't seem to be feeling great after the transplant, so my experiment is completely and utterly flawed. But still, my oaks do very good.
Some of the siberian pea shrubs i watered with acacia root biome seem very happy too! Green leaves, they stayed yellow too long.
My hazel cuttings seem to do well, i removed some dying ones from the pots, i planted ten in a pot abouts, and to my surprise one still had formed a root.
So i have hope that they do root over the summer, so i can transplant in autumn.
Here is the photo of the oak experiment.

hau Hugo, I love your experiments and results, (they are fairly scientific by the way, just not documented for others).
I see you have discovered that acacia root works very similar to willow water (a rooting hormone in the bark can be extracted with water), and acacia also stimulates the microorganisms.
For those transplant shocked trees dissolve a vitamin B-12 capsule in a quart of water then dilute to one half gallon and water the poor things, it will help their root systems recover faster.

Keep up the great works and keep us up to date please, it is exciting to me.

Redhawk

Eric Hanson wrote:dig a little hole near the tree’s roots and bury a nylon stocking or old pair of pantyhose filled with cooked rice and let it sit.  

The basic idea is that the microbes will grow into the rice in the stocking.  After a few weeks, you pull out the stocking and you have a bunch of rice infused with microbes which can then easily be spread into the gardens.

Sounds like a plan. We buy broken white rice which we add to our dog food.  It is very cheap and sounds like just the the thing to use for this project. Thank you.

Hugo Morvan wrote:I've read somewhere in the topics about soil building this comment by dr Redhawk that it's a good thing to go to the biggest oak in the forest and get some soil from around the stem and add it to your compost. Because oaks, especially old established ones have lots of different kinds of mycorrhizal fungi cooperation going on. Then add this soil to your compost, to inoculate it with those fungi (and bacteria). Which in turn will inoculate the garden when added to the garden soil. I've read in teaming with microbes, diversity in microbe species is a good thing, because if there are "bad" microbes there will always be one other kind praying on them, so a natural equilibrium will keep them in check, figured the same will go for mycelium.

We have oaks all over our property. It has been a neglected property in many ways. We acquired several truck loads of mulch/chips by luck. I spread it all 6" deep over a stand of about 20 trees to cover the bare earth. Some of the mulch already showed signs of fungal activity. Mushroom caps popped up all over within a few weeks. The strongest showing around the drip line of the oaks. Must be some truth to what you are saying.

Today i was in the woods again and took more soil from an alder, a beech and an oak, mixed it all in the bucket with extra home made worm-compost and planted the healthy oaks that sprouted in the forest in spring and that i nourished over a scorching summer, in my half acre veggie patch. There were seven of them, when i got them out of the pot after a good soaking i could see mycelium had formed around some of the roots. I've planted them here and there in the slightly raised beds. Dug a hole added the mixed soil from the trees and compost.
I hope they will form a web in time and infect other trees, shrubs and veggies with good mycorrhizal fungi. I got a lot of seeds from peach i'll plant in the vicinity to have them infected. The experiment continues!

It's fun to see this thread updated.  Thank you Hugo.

Concerning getting the "right" fungi, nature does this by releasing millions and millions of fungal spores every time a fruiting body (mushroom) emerges from the soil and releases its spores to the wind.  These are constantly being produced, constantly being carried to new locations, and constantly colonizing new soil.  Yes, there is clearly a benefit to exposing new plants to fungal rich soil early on, but in the case of trees, sooner or later, a fungal spore will float in and find a home near the roots of your oak.  Sooner or later . . . but mostly sooner.  There are millions of fungal spores laying around on the soil surface, and billions more being incorporated down into the soil profile by worms, beetles and other biota on a daily basis.

Spores happen.

What seems to be more critical than transferring soil from here to there, or capturing the "right" microbes/fungi with various means (rice, etc.) is creating an environment where they can thrive once they get to where you want them.  That's why wood chips are such an amazing amendment for the creation of soil and the support of fungal networks.  Simply by dumping chips around the base of your trees, you exponentially increase the food source they need to survive and thrive.  The chips themselves will have fungal spores already on them, and when you dump that wheelbarrow load of chips on the ground around your new trees, you'll be burying all the spores that are already laying there -- a perfect medium for them to take off and colonize the chips.

Yes, you can make slurries from mushrooms, transfer soil from location to location, and use other measures to see that your soil is colonized with the right microbes, but nothing speeds this process along quicker (IMHO) than a load of wood chips and hard-tine rake.  If you feed them, they will come.  In fact, they're already there.

Jay Angler wrote:Dr. Redhawk wrote:

you do need to find the downed tree rather soon after the event for best results.

Please narrow "soon"  a little. We had a huge storm ~8 weeks ago and damp weather since. Would the tree that tipped then likely do the job?  It's hung up at 45 degrees, so it will have to be brought down when the weather improves for safety reasons.

Sorry Jay, I just noticed your question, so I'm really late with an answer.
If roots dry out, you are going to be harvesting dormant fungi or spores (gently scrape the smaller exposed roots of the downed tree). Fungi will go dormant within 3 days of no moisture being present, the endomycorrhizae will be alive and well as long as the root hasn't dried out but if it has, you will still get viable fungi, it will just take longer since they have to revive or sprout. I try to do any of this sort of harvesting within two weeks of the tree going down, but I've also done it months later with success because I realized I was dealing with dormant fungi and spores.

I use a knife and a piece of tin shaped into a half moon shape for scraping the roots to gather any mycorrhizae that would be lost from exposure and drying out, the knife is not used for slicing it is used as if it were a cabinet scraper.
for endomycorrhizae you can cut small, feeder type roots, the fungi are inside those roots and since the tree is down, I feel like I am saving species by taking the mycorrhizae and giving them a new home.

Redhawk

Hi Fun-guys

WHat you are looking for is in Korean Natural Farming, they came up with rice under a tree system.

THey don't just put the rice into the field, they take the innoculated rice and put it in water with a sugar source to multiply the fungi mightily, then feed plants and soil.

They may saturate the soil for a month before planting.

The inventor of KNF has a son who took his ideas to another level.

He grows microbes from leaf mold in water with potato as the preferred food source.

Get the book JADAM ORGANIC FARMING

also the web site EN.JADAM.KR has videos etc.

Late to the party, but I just found this forum and post searching to attract/increase/accelerate mycorrhizae innoculation of aged birch wood shavings/sawdust. The aim being to replicate preferred food of a forest floor litter loving worm maintained indoors. Interior AK climate and non-native species.

Wood 🙃 it work to inoculate mesh bags of buried aged wood chips near trees? or could soaking rotten fallen branches with lichen or another fungus on it, then spraying that solution in layers in to the shavings pile work faster?

My goal is to use the granular fertilizer spreader to broadcast worm castings all over my lawn, also out in to trees, before rains. Also add castings to produce and flower garden plants, and house plants.

Eric Hanson wrote:One addendum to my earlier post,

I once saw a video about harvesting microbes.  The basic technique was the same—harvest microbes from beneath healthy trees.  The difference though was to instead of taking soil, instead dig a little hole near the tree’s roots and bury a nylon stocking or old pair of pantyhose filled with cooked rice and let it sit.  

The basic idea is that the microbes will grow into the rice in the stocking.  After a few weeks, you pull out the stocking and you have a bunch of rice infused with microbes which can then easily be spread into the gardens.

My plan is to dig my little holes and replace with stockings of rice so that I can harvest some more microbes later.

Please let me know your thoughts,

Eric