posted 6 years ago
Redhawk,
Thanks for chiming in and taking an interest in my wood chip/mushroom compost project. Instinct told me that the wood chip compost would likely be good for P and K values, but if I see signs of deficiency, I will break out the greensand and bone meal. I always appreciate your sage input to my projects.
TJ,
Thanks for the response,
This last weekend I went out to my main chip/mushroom bed from last year and planted about 300 inoculated peas. I simply mixed the peas in a bag with the dry inoculate, shook, and then pushed the little peas into the "soil" about an inch or so, and after planting the peas I sprinkled the inoculate over the bed. Although I have not had any real mushrooms appear, my wood chips have plenty of mycelia growing through them, and the whole pile is like a big spongy mat, and not like a pile of individual chips. In numerous places, my fingers easily broke apart soft chips that were barely strong enough to hold themselves together and the chips themselves were innervated with little white strands of mycelia. This bed is about 12" thick, thicker than what you suggest, but the effects of the fungal inoculation are clear. The bed is supported (barely) by old oak and hickory logs. I stepped on one of the logs to reach in to plant a pea and the log absolutely crumbled under the weight of my foot, so there is quite a bit of rot taking place. Whether or not this log rotted from wine cap mycelia or some other form of rot I can not determine, but I expect that this is the last year I will be able to rely on those logs to support my bed.
Additionally, and perhaps supporting your assertion about the ideal depth of the chips, I did grow tomatoes in this bed last summer by making fertile holes of a manure/topsoil combination, I am pretty certain that the tomato roots did not limit themselves to the dimensions of the fertile hole, and thus the wine caps likely had roots with which to interact. I have also heard that wine caps like to have some interaction with soil, and perhaps the soil from the fertile holes enhanced their growth. With luck, the wine caps will have plenty more roots for interaction this spring summer as I plan to have lots of peas, followed by beans in the hopes that these legumes will add plenty of N to the chips as well as offer some dappled shade for the mushrooms. By summer time I will plant summer squash on old fertile holes for a three purposes--firstly, and obviously, I want some food growing there, secondly, I want to get some more good root growth and microbial action going in the wood chips (which should be well on their way to turning back into soil by the end of the summer) and finally to offer a little shade for more wine cap production.
This has been a very interesting long term project for me. I first piled up my chips two years ago, let them sit for a year and inoculated them about a year ago. My goal is to eventually convert all of my current beds into wood chip/mushroom compost beds, in effect making my own nutritionally dense and microbially active soil for my gardens. I am especially focusing on the microbial side of things. I can always just add more nutrients that I buy in from the store, but making the microbial communities takes fair amount of time and dedication. I have two other beds that I plan to convert to wood chip compost starting this spring. I need to get some sides built up and I have a nice pile of chips sitting for about a year slowly decomposing. If things work right this spring, I will get those chips spread out and get them inoculated with wine caps and start phase two of my mushroom compost plans and I will learn from mistakes I made from my first bed. In my first bed I used far too small a supply of initial sawdust spawn to cover the area the size of my bed. I think that had I used about twice the initial supply of spawn I would have drastically sped up the decomposition and even had some mushrooms the first year. I have roped in some friends who like mushrooms and this year I plan on buying in bulk so I can really get the decomposition going. With a little luck, I will have a total of three beds of wood chip/mushroom compost. Once those beds are completed, I plan to top off the beds each year with wood chips that I chip up from around my property.
I have rambled on again, but thanks a lot TJ Jefferson and Redhawk for all your input into my project and as always, If you see something I am doing wrong or something I can do better, please let me know. I will keep this updated in another post I have about composting woodchips.
Thanks again,
Eric
Some places need to be wild