Mixing raspberries with stropharia "mulch", strawberries and anything else

Hello permies,

I've been working hardly (or hardly working sometimes...) on a permaculture design for my garden, in a 8b zone.

One of the things I want, and that seems possible as it's grown in the region, and I already had a few success in the garden, is raspberries.

Here's what I plan so far to do:

- Have some slightly raised beds where I have the raspberries in row
- Have several varieties so that I can both extend the growing season, test their taste, and see where individual variety might perform well and poorly
- Have as many species growing, both for better productivity, stacking functions, and to try and apply permaculture principles, such as how there's no empty space in nature
- Try to grow mushrooms around the raspberries too (King Stropharia, and possibly others such as Oyster Mushrooms

There might be a few things that can be opposite, and so I'm asking for your inputs.

Basically, I'd have slightly raised beds at least single-dug to improve texture and aerate, with composted horse manure, clay-ish soil from the path so that I can actually raise the beds properly. There would be a raspberry plant in there, 45cm away from its siblings. Now, depending on the spot in the garden, I'd either have wood chips around them, inoculated with mycelium, or strawberry plants. A few tansy, calendula, achilea... around as companions.

So, the mushroom would love humidity, but on the top of a raised bed (even if slightly raised), would it still be a good idea ? Would it be better to have the mycelium at the base of the beds, or maybe have most of it around the beds, a bit of it on the bed ?

The variety of raspberries that are going to be there will be Black Jewel, Marastar, Heritage, Fall Gold, Himbo Top and Little Sweet. I plan to plant them as soon as possible, in several days, maybe one or two weeks at most; I want them in the soil for the autumn to try to get something the coming year. The goal is to get enough raspberries per day to cover the whole season, about 125g per day.

What are your thoughts, on that mushroom addition, and possibly on the other things I've talked about ?

Thanks and have a nice day.

Mmmh, I didn't expect no replies. Since mushroom season is upon us, I'll give everyone a pass.

So far, the plan is to make round, slightly elevated mounds, that I'm double-digging as per the Grow Biointensive method (added some manure on top of the grass before digigng); I'm going to dig the paths so that it add more topsoil there, and hopefully have less weeding to do. Some paths will be rarely used, so I'll put the bulk of the mulch there. I'll still laying some woodchips on top of the mound, so that it might still be colonized; however I'll leave an empty circle around the raspberries crown.

The whole thing extended itself too, I'm going to have an angle, 3m on one size, 4 on the other. The sunnier one, on the sunny side, will have some raspberries as ground cover. I'll still try to have some mushroom behind the canes, but I am less sure about how effective it will be.

I've also ran some numbers; the woodchips I can get are coming from the store, but with the price I'm getting them, I'm getting mushrooms, mulch, and new topsoil. Ideally I'd need free woodchips, but my wood chipper, a Ryobi one, is an expensive piece of trash. It's severely degraded about an intensive... two hours... of use. So until I can get it replaced and cycle the wood from the garden again, I'll stick to store bought woodchips.

Oyster mushooms, king stropharia, nameko, enokitake... I'm probably doing way too much, but I'm also having way too much fun.

Still, if anyone has any ideas or tips, feel free to contribute.

Mike, out.

I am sorry that no one has replied.

Maybe folks did not know that stropharia are mushrooms.

I don't know too much about growing mushrooms with poly-culture.

At least you are having fun with this.

And remember that mushrooms improve soil fertility.

I did find this older thread that might be of interest:

https://permies.com/t/18653/Mushroom-polyculture

Hi Mike,

Sounds lke a good plan.  My raspberries and strawberries absolutly love woodchips, and so do my winecaps (king stropharia).  I think they have the potential to make for a nice guild.

Not so sure about adding oysters to the mix.  I grow them on logs, but never tried to do them "in the ground".  Winecaps are relatively easy to establish and produce in abundance. Seeing as you are limited in terms of woodchips, I woud recommend establishing the winecaps first so they dominate the new beds and are not in direct competition with other varieties.  Can you do the oysters on logs, perhaps?

I have no experience with nameko or enokitake, so I won't comment on those.

Interested to hear back on how it all works out for you - cheers!

If you can't get a local arborist to dump a load of woodchips on your property, maybe a town nearby has their own forestry guys in the maintenance crews, and have a chip pile free for the taking.

My wild black raspberries do well with thick woodchip mulch. My chips get inoculated by the soil. So I miss out on a crop of edible fungus as well as many varieties of raspberries. However, I am learning to value the varieties that are native to my soil. They are proven survivors in my garden. I re-learned this lesson again this year when the volunteer tomatoes, kale, cilantro, lettuces, peppers, etc thrived in spite of the conditions that made my intentionally started garden struggle.
The volunteers all come from spoiled fruit, and from the plants I couldn't eat fast enough and went to seed.

Free black raspberries (enough in the freezer for a full year), free wood chips, free fungus ~ those all fit my budget.

Raspberries grow easy in my granite soils in Central France. I'm interested to hear how you fare with all those differing varieties trying to span the whole growing season, as i'm looking for that trait in the apples and pears i'm grafting.
I have no experience with growing other mushrooms than red wine caps on soil. I've had them on my pathways when i still was using wood chips. That worked great! And as far as i know they're the only mycelium that can beat a lot of other wild mycelia long term. Wild mycelia being hyper adapted to local conditions and any given soil type/ food source , they will get the upper hand eventually. Most of our domesticated mycelia varieties were moddy coddled in vitro and selected for taste/ size/ color and shape more then competitiveness with wild meycelia... But... red winecap seems to be able make a lot of friends with plantroots, so i've read on the Permies (so it must be true then,giggle). Anyway i've moved a lot of raspberries into my treeguilds lately, as they try to take over my home garden and I have noticed many a times they have a web of mycelia around their roots, hopefully for you that your desired mycelia can make friends with your raspberries. Every variety will react differently usually, so with your experiment you'll have the chance of monitoring with which raspberry variety which mushroomtype can make a connection, which in itself is very nerdy important information!
And yes, it sucks not having a source of cheap woodchips. My neighbor farmer bought one for behind the tractor and we've used it twice. It sucked as well. Another farmer rents a guy with a serious broyeur that can handle oak trees whole (which i find terrible, but very impressive none-the-less). I hope to be able to get back into using that one day soon, because buying is not an option and many a times fully colonized with wild spores and mycelia allready.
Good continuation, will be following this thread.

I've had great success growing raspberries in raised bed rows with king stropharia/winecaps in the wood chip mulch alongside them. I use unsprayed straw as a casing (mulch) layer on top of the wood chips. In fact, I think king stopharia is the best edible mushroom companion for raspberries (and visa versa).

But growing other edible mushrooms alongside your raspberries might be difficult for a beginner. For example, I've had very little luck with growing oysters in outdoor wood chip beds. But here's a video by Tony at Freshcap Mushrooms that shows exactly how to do it with straw without much effort:



As you can see, he grows the oysters on straw without companion plants in a well-shaded bed by themselves.

You might want to start your raspberry/stropharia or oyster project in late winter/early spring. I've had poor luck with starting outdoor mushroom projects in fall, including winecaps. Good luck and please let us know how it goes...