Inoculating a pile of mixed wood chips?

Hey Ya’ll, I’m brand new to permaculture and even gardening. I just put down a huge layer of woodchips in preparation for a backyard food forest in suburban Salt Lake City, UT and have questions about composting with mushrooms!

I’m fine letting the chips sit and decompose for a year before planting, but have been looking into ways to accelerate this process and came across mushroom composting, which sounds awesome! This has quickly become my top choice because I love mushrooms/mycelium in general, the improved bacteria/fungal ratio sounds cool, and maybe I can even use an edible, or mix of edible mushrooms, to do the trick!

Now, if the wood chips were all hardwood I’d just start with wine caps. But I definitely have about 1/3 to maybe even 1/2 conifer in the pile I put down. So, is there a mix of mushrooms that would work good in this case? Something like Phoenix Mushroom? Should I just use a stronger concentration of only wine caps and hope they grow on patches that aren’t conifer? Should I consider going the wild mushroom route and not eat em? The actual mushroom bloom is just a secondary perk to the decomposition of the chips.

I have a minimal idea of what inoculating wood chips like this actually looks like, I’ve read a few threads on Permies, watched a couple videos, but any helpful links would be appreciated!

Lastly, I’m ok with this not working out, it’d still be cool and worth my time to learn about mushrooms, inoculation, mycelium and all that, even if they don’t produce in abundance. But am I out of my depths even trying something like this as a total noobie?

Hi Jackson, Welcome to Permies!

I know all to well your desire to decompose everything with mushrooms so let me applaud that specific ambition of yours right there.

But now on to the chips themselves.  I would say your instincts on Wine Caps is dead on.  Even if 1/2 of the chips are conifers, that means 1/2 are hardwoods.  Maybe you could improve that ratio a bit by mixing in some straw?  Straw colonizes faster than hardwood and created what I like to call “fungal fire”, or an accelerant for growing Wine Caps.

Tempting though it is, I would avoid mixing varieties of mushrooms.  Fungi don’t play nice with each other and Wine Caps are sorta the bullies in the playground when it comes to fungi.  As fungi grow they emit chemicals to ward off other fungi from growing, Wine Caps being one of the very best at this sort of fungal chemical warfare.

I think letting your chips age is a sound idea.  The problem with Wine Caps and conifers is the sap.  Chipping alone breaks up the sap defense barriers and aging dries out the sap.  Further, mixing the conifer chips with hardwood dilutes the effect of the conifers even more.  I strongly suspect that when you go to inoculate chips that you will get good fungal growth and the fungal mass will eventually invade the conifer chips, even if they are not the first choice.

Good luck on your project!  I am looking forward to seeing how it works out.  Please keep us updated.  If you still have questions, by all means, feel free to ask.

Eric

Jackson,

Here is my link to my great big list of Wine Cap resources.

https://permies.com/t/wine-cap-mushrooms

I suggest starting out with the thread about breaking down a pile of wood chips with mushrooms as that thread details my experience from being a complete fungal neophyte to having some degree of skill at growing Wine Caps today.  I keep it updated as a resource for anyone else wanting to try something similar.  If you are so inclined, feel free to post your own experience there as well, many others have done so and your experience would make a nice addition.

I hope this helps,

Eric

Eric, I received my winecap spawn today and am thinking of putting the sawdust spawn in my jerusalum artichoke patch that's in my wood mulched food forest.  Have you ever heard of any allelopathic issues with this combination?

I have not heard of any such issues and I think it would make a fine companion to the Jerusalem Artichokes.

Thanks wine cap guru!

Hey Eric, just the man I was hoping to hear from haha! Thanks so much for your reply and documenting your journey with winecaps so thoroughly, I’m really loving this forum as a resource and still working on getting through all of your wine cap posts but seriously, thank you. I’ll be putting in an order soon to see what I can get started! I’m sure I’ll check back in with updates and asking for help haha. I have much to learn.

So, in the mean time y’all,

We had lots of rain and some snow these last few days, and when it cleared I went searching for signs of mycelium in my yard (doing my best to be gentle!). I flipped over the first log laying under a juniper bush and found some growing right on the top soil/log interface. That look right? Pic 1

Then I found this old dried, decomposing mushroom, any idea how old it could be?

This was underneath what used to be a densely shaded area between an overgrown juniper and insanely overgrown barberry bush. I cleared the area with the goal of making a wildflower/grass meadow.

This morning, I noticed a difference in the soil surrounding the barberry bush. It was raised, kind of fluffy and the bushes had been naturally mulching the soil with dead under brush for who knows how long. I just bought the property, an old couple lived here and had a gorgeous garden years ago but its been long overgrown- rumor has it the block I live on used to be an orchard! The soil was awesome between the two bushes and you could practically stick your whole hand right in it. Then i noticed that the top inch or so of top soil was sliding right off and underneath was a sprawling, seemingly 2D mat of mycelium. And underneath that was slightly less decomposed mulch than the top soil. That sound right?  last pic

I noticed that this new growth wild rose looks like it actually  has mycelium popping up out of the soil? The base was covered in years of juniper needles and got virtually zero sunlight. Or could that be some kind of sickness?

So it seems like there’s lots of fungal activity already going on in my yard which has me super excited! Adding winecap spawn will only accelerate this, right? It won’t compete against/damage the current fungi in my biome?

Is there a reason not to introduce this “playground bully” for fungi-diversity sake, or my soil’s unique biome or something? I’m most excited about the effects of fungal dominated soil, and would sacrifice fruiting edible mushrooms for more mushroom power in the garden, if necessary.

With all that fungal activity surrounding the barberry, I should keep it right? Even though I’d prefer something edible? The birds sure do love it!

I gotta say, it sure is awesome to be learning about all this for the first time one day, then go out the next day and watch all the processes taking place naturally in my yard thats obviously been "doing it's own thing" for years now. I'm grateful to have you all to learn from!

Also, I've been collecting grass clippings and coffee grounds from the neighborhood, racked up quite the supply. Should I hold off on adding it to the chips until the fungi has time to inoculate the chips? Maybe add to a section that I wasn't planning on inoculating right away?

Jackson,

So I would say that you have good news and essentially more good news.

The fact that you can go out and find a number of different fungi growing all over your property says to me that you have a nice, healthy ecosystem.  Congratulations!

Even better, this diversity of fungi says to me that you also have plenty of healthy bacteria necessary for active fungal growth.

As far as growing Wine Caps, you may need to make a few, minor alterations.

I would collect a bunch of freshly chipped up wood and place in a location outside of other fungi.  This is not for the Wine Caps, but to ensure that the Wine Caps don’t obliterate other healthy fungi.  Ideally, the chips should be in contact with the ground as Wine Caps like to have one foot in the chips and one in the soil.  Given some time, the Wine Caps will turn all those chips into wonderful compost.

Wine Caps are indeed edible but check daily, even by the hour as the actual mushroom grows so quickly that I have seen a mushroom just start to push up, I have run to town and when I returned the mushroom had grown past its edible prime—they grow that fast!

You have an eye for spotting fungi and I think you will appreciate Wine Caps.  Let me know what you think.

Eric

For people that don't care about growing edible mushrooms, I have had good luck just walking around my property grabbing whatever mushrooms I can find, grinding them up in the blender with water, and dumping them on wood chips.  You will end up with a fascinating array of mushrooms, and I just figure the ones that like those conditions best will win, and I'll still get great compost.  PS.  I hate the taste of mushrooms, so this works well for me.

Trace,

How long does it take for your “grab-em-wild-and-dump-them-in” approach to actually decompose the woody substrate?  Under good conditions, Wine Caps obliterate wood in one season.

Eric Hanson wrote:Trace,

How long does it take for your “grab-em-wild-and-dump-them-in” approach to actually decompose the woody substrate?  Under good conditions, Wine Caps obliterate wood in one season.

To be honest, I don't know.  So much depends on the spot they are sitting.  If the soil there is already improved, they break down much quicker.  I also keep my wood chips in pile for some indeterminate amount of time, and take wheelbarrows full off as I use them.  My haphazard method doesn't lend well to measurements.

I can tell you that in damp conditions, like those in the interior of the pile, I get those beautiful lines of mycelium throughout the pile quite quickly.

You can grow wine caps on a mix of woods. Just add some straw.
Do not mix strains of mushrooms though, they are like a Highlander: there should be only one
The main problem as I see it is a location: Utah is hot and you need to do a research, googling up "wine caps die at temperature..." or something like it.
Hope it works for you.

Thanks for the great replies, life pulled me away from the garden for a bit but the winecaps are finally on their way! I've been doing some research, and it looks like wine caps are saprotrophic- I don't mind if they eliminate other native decomposer fungi, but do they pose any threat to the mycorrhizal fungi? What about once the wine caps have eaten through all of their food source in the wood chips? I get that they inhabit different layers of the soil, but could they go start a fight with native mycorrhizal fungi in enemy territory?

They can be playground bullies in the woodchips all they want as long as they stay away from the soil/root systems. In the end of the day, I'm here for the nutrient sharing function of mycorrhizae.  If using wine caps threatens that in any way, I'd probably just find a different way to inoculate these wood chips.

Although as I think more about it, I'm probably oversimplifying all of this. When I moved in last summer the first thing I did was cut 2 massive dead pine trees that were in danger of falling on the house. So, those root systems aren't photosynthesizing anymore, they're probably inhabited by saprotrophic fungi right? It seems like that's just the natural phase of the garden at this time. there's more stuff decomposing than there is photosynthesizing. So there are different types of mycorrhizal, Arbuscular mycorrhizae being the type that searches for nutrients left over by saprotrophic fungi. It seems like once the wine caps kick in, I want to make sure the trees I plant this fall are mycorrhizal, but more specifically Arbuscular Mycorrhizal sense there will be more nutrients laying around from decomposition than photosynthesis, right?

So the question, do wine caps play nice with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi?

Jackson,

Life took me away from Permies for a couple of days so I am just now getting to your most recent post.

I don’t think that Wine Caps will cause any problems with your root zone fungi (sorry, my iPhone spell check won’t let me use more technical terminology).  Mostly Wine Caps are interested in their goodies in the wood chips and not interested in destroying the soil-dwelling, root zone fungi.  And I see (and have) lush gardens thoroughly inhabited by Wine Caps.  And as much as I have used Wine Caps, I have never seen them jump out of my garden—they seem to want to stay put in my wood chips so I think you are safe.

I hope you have a fruitful experience with your mushroom experiment!  Please do keep us updated.

Eric