Hey Eric, can I walk on my wine cap beds?

So here is the deal: I want to grow wine caps in wood chips a la the illustrious Mr. Eric Hansen. I am planning on re-filling in my garden paths with wood chips and I know that these would be the perfect environment for growing the shrooms aside from one thing. Can I grow them in my paths? Will walking and kneeling on them be too hard on the fungi? I am not super concerned about the harvest amount but I do want to get MAXIMUM DECOMPOSITION of the chips. Just trying to stack some functions here but if it's a dumb idea let me know. I have zero experience growing mushrooms. Attached is a picture of the cross section of my garden space. To make it clear the beds exist more below grade than above, due to really poor existing soil. I have cold winters and hot dry summers. Not a ton of sun, except in summer,  as I live on the north side of a ridge.

...and thanks!

Hi Dan, i started doing exactly this, this year and it works fine. i did them in early summer and dug deep holes and filled it completely with woodchips and cardboard on top. Watered it at times, it had a great refuge under ten inches of damp chips and i harvested in the autumn. Now it's spreading all over the paths hopefully. Many other mushrooms show up everywhere, i walk on all the paths, they couldn't care less. I use white dutch clover as a woodchip  path cover crop as well.
inoculated path

Dan,

Hugo pretty much has it right.  If you wanted to, you could drop a couple of stepping stones on the chips.  This would spread out your weight as you step down, and the chips beneath won’t just crush and break the little strands of mycelium running through the wood.  In fact, the stepping stones will provide dense shade beneath and it should stay moist much longer.  I would be willing to bet that after the fungi fruits you get a nice little ring of mushrooms right around the stone.

My garden beds are 8’x16’ so they are a bit large for me to just reach in.  Sometimes I place in a couple stepping stones just to give me a place to stand so I don’t disturb the fungi.

But if you want to use chips in the paths where you are walking, I don’t think you have much to lose.  At worst, the places you actually place your feet might not fruit, but make no mistake, those chips are on borrowed time anyways once they make contact with the soil and wine caps will only drastically speed up that decomposition.

Good Luck and please keep us updated!

Eric

OK sweet. Thanks Hugo, actually it was your clover/chip/shroom post that inspired this plan. Or I guess to be honest, reminded me of Eric's posts about this kind of thing. Last year I was going to make a bed of chips and I ran out of time. This year I will likely run out of time if I try so I hope to get it going by using the paths that are already 3/4 done.

I will keep you posted.

And I really like the idea of stepping stones, mostly for the moisture retention.

Thanks again!

Hi Dan, any updates yet?