Gardening with mushrooms?

Total newbie here and frst I should say I would have never thought of doing/trying this if it weren't for a link that turned up in my email... Mushroom Garden  
I read that then scurried over here to see if I could find more information and ordered a couple of books for further research.  
Which brings me up to now.   I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We are still talking winter here. Tomatoes etc go in about Mid May most years but we may have to hold off until the first part of June.  So I have a lot of time to read, absorb knowledge and ask questions.

My current incarnation of my garden is 4 boxes set on the ground to help DH know garden plants from weeds...  Each box is 6 inches deep by 8 feet long, three of them are 3 feet wide and one is about 18 inches wide.  Most of the garden is in full sun which is good for veggies but apparently that is not good for mushrooms.  I do have a shaded section that I can move my narrow box to and I think that would be a decent size for an experiment.  
Is it really as easy as pour in wood chips, spread spawn around, top with wood chips and wait?  I have read enough to know that pine or cedar mulch is not what I need.  So if I have to use packaged bulk shavings/chips what would you recommend?   If I go to a nursery how do I know the chips I get will work?

I saw that they used straw in two different ways. One was as a mulch for the garden which is not a bad idea except we have high winds here and I can see that mulch going all over when a 50 mph gust hit the garden...  The other was to just grow the mushrooms in a bale of straw...  this makes a bit more sense for here as straw bales are heavy enough to stay in place.   Straw I can get with a lots less fuss then trying for chips....  
What are the advantages of one way over the other are it is simply different mediums for different mushrooms?

Dorothy,

Sorry I missed this earlier.  Mushrooms are not only a great crop to grow, they are a great companion crop for other vegetables.  I have done some experimentation and my personal favorite combination is to grow Wine Cap mushrooms in a bed of tomatoes.  I will try to explain here.

First off, the Wine Caps.  Since you have never grown mushrooms before, Wine Caps are a great way to start.  Wine Caps are kinda like training wheels for mushroom growers.  They grow aggressively and they thrive on neglect.  Importantly, they actually prefer to have some sunlight--dappled shade is the term that gets used.  This is exactly the sunlight you will find underneath bushy tomato plants.  You do want to make sure that the Wine Caps have plenty of moisture--their growing medium should be damp--but then you want your tomatoes to have water also.  I would say that if you are getting one watered, you are probably watering the other by default.  Further, as the Wine Cap fungus breaks down the wood chips or straw (you can use either), they leave behind a wonderfully rich compost filled with microorganisms.  My tomatoes have never looked so healthy since I started growing them alongside Wine Caps.

So about the Tomatoes.  Tomatoes make a great companion for Wine Caps for a variety of reasons.  Tomatoes love heat and grow vigorously in the summer, exactly when the Wine Caps need shade.  Tomatoes send out a dense network of fine roots and the main fungal body of the Wine Cap will intricately wrap itself around the tomato roots.  They actually feed each other!  If you are watering your tomatoes, you are probably watering your Wine Caps as well.  Also, the tall, arching nature of the tomato plants allows for some natural air circulation (without being windy) around the areas growing Wine Caps.  I have tried other plants to use as companions with Wine Caps but I keep coming back to tomatoes which seem to work best.

I realize that in your area wood chips might be hard to come by and the wood chips you can get would probably be conifers that are not conducive to Wine Cap growth.  Fear not as you can absolutely use straw as a growing medium!  It is good that you have an ample supply of straw.  Straw has some advantages and some disadvantages as compared to wood chips.  But first we will work with the advantages.  Straw will tend to colonize faster and produce mushrooms faster.  However, when growing in straw, Wine Caps tend to live fast and die young.  The basic life cycle of a fungus is that the main body (what we typically call the fungus, or sometimes the mildew) will get established in a medium (straw or woodchips), grow and become established.  During this phase the fungi undergo sexual reproduction and aggressively colonize the growing medium.  The fungus is happy to do this until it exhausts it supply of food (Straw, Wood Chips) at which point it sort of panics, pushes up a mushroom and releases spores (the asexual part) that blow in the wind to land somewhere else to begin the cycle again.

What this all means for growing mushrooms is that the faster the substrate produces actual mushrooms, the faster it will need replacement.  Essentially a mushroom grows when the fungi is in danger of starving.  Wood chips are a bit more dense than straw and in my experience take a full year to actually push up a mushroom (mileage may vary) but the fruiting lasts longer as there is more actual food available.  Straw, on the other hand, starts out quickly, often taking half the time to produce a mushroom and sometimes even less--but those are under ideal circumstances.  When they do produce a flush, get them quickly as they tend to burst out of the straw but the fruiting won't last long.  Also, pick the Wine Caps early when they are still small, meaning 1-2 inches in diameter.  This is when they taste best and at this point they really do taste quite good.  However, let them grow and they will easily get to the size of dinner plates!  They can get HUGE quickly.  I mean no exaggeration when I say this but there are times when I would leave for an errand, check on the mushrooms and see some prime-to-pick mushrooms in the garden.  I would return in 1-2 hours and they would be HUGE.  Once they get so huge, I would not bother eating them.  They are not poisonous, but the leather in your shoes would probably taste better!  Wine Caps really need to be picked while still small and a delay of even an hour can ruin them.  You might even want to pick them several times per day.

Personally, for me the actual mushroom is a tasty side effect.  My main purpose of growing Wine Caps is to produce mushroom compost and I think this is one of the most fertile growing mediums available on earth.  I have an abundance of wood chips and in one season I can turn those chips from wood into something that looks like coffee grounds but with the fertility of aged manure.  You can get something similar with straw, but straw just won't be as substantial as wood chips.  You will still get some great growing media, especially if you are using entire bales of straw.  In fact I would grow it for this reason alone, even if you can't get a single mushroom.

Dorothy,  I realize this has been a long post.  I do have two long running posts about growing mushrooms and if you like I could link those in.  I wish you the best of luck and encourage you on your mushroom journey.  I am an advocate for Wine Caps, but you can make up your own mind--you may have other plans and I will try to help you as I can with those.

I hope this is helpful and best of luck to you,

Eric

Thanks for the reply it really was helpful.  it would be nice if you linked the threads you mentioned.

Like you I am after the soil improvement more then the mushrooms but they are a nice treat also.   I was glad to hear I can actually use the wine caps on either  straw or wood.  Yesterday I  stumbled onto a good deal on the 4 cubic bales of Aspen shavings like used for small animals... the aspen bales ended up being the same price as straw bales!  So yep a bale or two of aspen followed me home. I will get some straw later and use both in my garden.  

About that aspen bedding...  I saw a video about growing oyster mushrooms in a 5 gallon bucket using aspen bedding.  So when I spotted those bales I went ahead and got the food grade bucket and a big tote to hydrate my aspen in.   Right now it is too cold and the chance of snow is still to high to try putting mushroom spore in the garden but I figured I could make one of those buckets, get mushrooms to eat plus I can use some of the bucket to help make a bed when it warms up...

Wine Caps are on my list for sure now.  Grin I love tomatoes.  My warm weather transplants go out mid May to the first of June so I will make sure I have spores on hand  at that time to put in my mulch.  I foresee many mushrooms in my future...

Eric Hanson wrote:Dorothy,

Sorry I missed this earlier.  Mushrooms are not only a great crop to grow, they are a great companion crop for other vegetables.  I have done some experimentation and my personal favorite combination is to grow Wine Cap mushrooms in a bed of tomatoes.  I will try to explain here.

First off, the Wine Caps.  Since you have never grown mushrooms before, Wine Caps are a great way to start.  Wine Caps are kinda like training wheels for mushroom growers.  They grow aggressively and they thrive on neglect.  Importantly, they actually prefer to have some sunlight--dappled shade is the term that gets used.  This is exactly the sunlight you will find underneath bushy tomato plants.  You do want to make sure that the Wine Caps have plenty of moisture--their growing medium should be damp--but then you want your tomatoes to have water also.  I would say that if you are getting one watered, you are probably watering the other by default.  Further, as the Wine Cap fungus breaks down the wood chips or straw (you can use either), they leave behind a wonderfully rich compost filled with microorganisms.  My tomatoes have never looked so healthy since I started growing them alongside Wine Caps.

So about the Tomatoes.  Tomatoes make a great companion for Wine Caps for a variety of reasons.  Tomatoes love heat and grow vigorously in the summer, exactly when the Wine Caps need shade.  Tomatoes send out a dense network of fine roots and the main fungal body of the Wine Cap will intricately wrap itself around the tomato roots.  They actually feed each other!  If you are watering your tomatoes, you are probably watering your Wine Caps as well.  Also, the tall, arching nature of the tomato plants allows for some natural air circulation (without being windy) around the areas growing Wine Caps.  I have tried other plants to use as companions with Wine Caps but I keep coming back to tomatoes which seem to work best.

I realize that in your area wood chips might be hard to come by and the wood chips you can get would probably be conifers that are not conducive to Wine Cap growth.  Fear not as you can absolutely use straw as a growing medium!  It is good that you have an ample supply of straw.  Straw has some advantages and some disadvantages as compared to wood chips.  But first we will work with the advantages.  Straw will tend to colonize faster and produce mushrooms faster.  However, when growing in straw, Wine Caps tend to live fast and die young.  The basic life cycle of a fungus is that the main body (what we typically call the fungus, or sometimes the mildew) will get established in a medium (straw or woodchips), grow and become established.  During this phase the fungi undergo sexual reproduction and aggressively colonize the growing medium.  The fungus is happy to do this until it exhausts it supply of food (Straw, Wood Chips) at which point it sort of panics, pushes up a mushroom and releases spores (the asexual part) that blow in the wind to land somewhere else to begin the cycle again.

What this all means for growing mushrooms is that the faster the substrate produces actual mushrooms, the faster it will need replacement.  Essentially a mushroom grows when the fungi is in danger of starving.  Wood chips are a bit more dense than straw and in my experience take a full year to actually push up a mushroom (mileage may vary) but the fruiting lasts longer as there is more actual food available.  Straw, on the other hand, starts out quickly, often taking half the time to produce a mushroom and sometimes even less--but those are under ideal circumstances.  When they do produce a flush, get them quickly as they tend to burst out of the straw but the fruiting won't last long.  Also, pick the Wine Caps early when they are still small, meaning 1-2 inches in diameter.  This is when they taste best and at this point they really do taste quite good.  However, let them grow and they will easily get to the size of dinner plates!  They can get HUGE quickly.  I mean no exaggeration when I say this but there are times when I would leave for an errand, check on the mushrooms and see some prime-to-pick mushrooms in the garden.  I would return in 1-2 hours and they would be HUGE.  Once they get so huge, I would not bother eating them.  They are not poisonous, but the leather in your shoes would probably taste better!  Wine Caps really need to be picked while still small and a delay of even an hour can ruin them.  You might even want to pick them several times per day.

Personally, for me the actual mushroom is a tasty side effect.  My main purpose of growing Wine Caps is to produce mushroom compost and I think this is one of the most fertile growing mediums available on earth.  I have an abundance of wood chips and in one season I can turn those chips from wood into something that looks like coffee grounds but with the fertility of aged manure.  You can get something similar with straw, but straw just won't be as substantial as wood chips.  You will still get some great growing media, especially if you are using entire bales of straw.  In fact I would grow it for this reason alone, even if you can't get a single mushroom.

Dorothy,  I realize this has been a long post.  I do have two long running posts about growing mushrooms and if you like I could link those in.  I wish you the best of luck and encourage you on your mushroom journey.  I am an advocate for Wine Caps, but you can make up your own mind--you may have other plans and I will try to help you as I can with those.

I hope this is helpful and best of luck to you,

Eric

Hi there Eric, thanks for this great info!
Hello also Dorothy! I also have some mushroom questions, and hope it’s ok if I ask them here too?

I was wondering Eric, if you thought the Winecap Tomato pairing would work in a warm temperate climate like south eastern Australia (north east of Melbourne). We plant our tomatoes at the end of September or later, and they grow through our summer and are done sometime around April/May depending on when the frosts come.
Do you think our summers would be too hot for Winecaps? We usually get at least a few days in the high 30’s C. And also it can get dry dry dry. I just can’t imagine a mushroom managing here over the summer.

Could it work over the autumn do you think? I’m imagining growing them under the broad beans or peas, which are a winter crop here.

Also, pretty much all the woodchips here would include at least some eucalyptus. Not sure what Winecaps would think about that....?

I guess I could try for a short Winecap season and use straw and hope they are done before the heat really kicks in?

Apologies for all the questions, I hope it’s ok to ask them here? Please let me know if I should ask in a different place or make a new thread, but I thought if it was in the same topic it would be ok.

Cheers Caitlin.  

Hello Caitlin!

I am not 100% familiar with Australian climate, but I don’t think the temperatures will be a problem.  My area gets very hot and humid summers, with temperatures regularly getting to the 90s F (I think that is about 35ish C) so I don’t see a problem there.  Your humidity might be a challenge, but there are some work/arounds.  For starters, I cover my substrate, woodchips, in straw to hold in moisture and help regulate temperature.  Also I intentionally grow in shade.  

If you are as dry as you say is it safe to assume that you need to water?  If so, a little extra watering will help keep the chips moist, especially if they are under straw.  Having chips under straw, in shade and with a cover crop should really cut down on evaporation, but you probably want to still check just to make sure it is moist/damp.

I honestly don’t know how well Wine Caps will work on Eucalyptus.  Does Eucalyptus have a sap?  I know it is fragrant.  How fast does it rot?  Wine Caps actually work best when teaming up with some bacteria and also like some nitrogen.  Not necessarily a lot of nitrogen, but if you are up to it, one of the best sources of nitrogen, as well as one of the cheapest, is diluted human urine poured right on to the chips themselves.  This feeds the plants, bacteria, and Wine Caps.  It does not take a lot and it does not stink.  It might help to do some initial breakdown of the Eucalyptus so that the Wine Caps can really get a foothold.

Caitlin, I would be very interested to know how this works for you.  I have a pretty good idea of how this works across much of North America and Europe, but Australia has a different climate and I am really curious about the Eucalyptus.  My personal suggestion would be to at least give it a try and see what works and maybe we can go from there.  Maybe we can tailor Wine Caps to your specific situation.  I do have a couple of ideas that might work.

This has been an interesting discussion and if you are still interested, I would be more than willing to help in whatever way I can.

Eric

Dorothy, Caitlin,

I included links to two long-running threads I have about growing Wine Caps.  The first thread is my regularly updated thread about my mushroom projects.  I included this link because in the beginning I, like you was a complete novice, just looking for any help I could get.  I was a bit intimidated and insecure about the project.  I had always grown vegetables and mushrooms were things to be avoided, fungus was something that damaged plants so growing them intentionally was counter-intuitive.  I have grown as a gardener for having started growing mushrooms and this first thread reflects this and I hope that you are able to take a similar path.

The second link is a bit more direct.  You have to scroll down a bit but eventually I give some step-by-step instructions on building a bed.  Now as this bed was specific to a particular site, there will need to be some alterations to your own site (in this one, there were some pine needles that needed to be cleared away).  I think that the basic steps will work for either of your setups, but we might have to do some alterations if we are working with eucalyptus.


https://permies.com/t/82798/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter

https://permies.com/t/130092/mushroom-newbie

In either case, I hope this helps and if you have any questions, as always, feel free to ask.

Eric

Thanks so much Eric that’s super helpful and very encouraging!
I’m unfortunately out of action for 6 weeks (umbilical hernia repair blah blah) so I’m sitting around frustrated, trying not to pick up my toddler, and working on lots of ideas and designs in my head lol. So, it’s going to take me a while to have a go at putting things into action, however, you’ve given me a lot to think about and work on.

The block I have to work on is my folks place, where I’m slowly setting up a small home to move my family back to. The block is about 2 acres, about half very steep and forested, the other half pretty well treed also. It’s on a south westerly slope (suns to the north here) and very poor soil (every inch of the area was turned over during the gold rush). It’s hard clay subsoil really, with a small amount of topsoil that’s naturally accumulated since the gold rush (a cm or two mostly).

This is what I’m thinking of trying for the Winecaps. I’d like to use them to build soil for growing a mix of both human and rabbit food. What if I placed hay bales in a line on contour, two deep but with a gap of about another hay bale between them, and filled the gap with wood chips. Treat the chips with diluted wee and the bales with coffee grounds as recommended by Dr RedHawk and then inoculate the chips and plant into fertile holes as you’ve documented. Then protect the top of the chips with a layer of loose hay, and plant the bales with fertile holes too. So the chips are essentially protected on all sides by the bales and the plants growing in them?

I’m hoping that this would provide me in the next season a quantity of mushroom compost to plant into, surrounded by decomposed-ish hay mulch. I also have a lot of wood than I can stack on the down slope side as a bit of a retainer (the sooner it rots the better).

What do you reckon?

Also, we get really two growing seasons here, a summer growing season (for things that love heat and hate frost) and a winter growing season (for things that like frost and are loved by aphids). Some things like kale and silverbeet etc we can grow year round. So, how long would you consider a wine cap season to be? Is it a 6 month process or more of a year long process? Like could I be setting it up in September for the summer season and then redoing it in April for the winter season or should I just let it be until the next summer?

Again thank you for all your advice. I really appreciate it as I’m a total beginner just having a go at things. I can’t wait to get into it and will let you know how I end up trying things and how it does/doesn’t work out.

Dorothy thank you also for posting this thread, It really helps to see how other people are approaching similar projects

Cheers, Caitlin.

well, i've only dabbled a bit in growing edible mushrooms, but i have some info to share, and some responses to some of the questions and ideas stated here.

it definitely depends on what kind of mushroom you are growing, what is the best way to do them.
many mushrooms grow on dead wood, but some wont, some prefer a manure based compost. oysters and wine caps are some of the easiest, but i am interested to try growing some common button/portabellas...in my reading these are grown on manure composts...after sterilizing/solarizing the soil/compost/substrate.
some are much simpler and you can simply introduce the mycellium to a wood chip mulch in a shady areas...those types that grow on dead wood.
and many have their preferred trees, but will take a varieties, mostly sweet woods are preferred,although each tree species has its common companion mushrooms.

some will grow on straw well and even grow onto cardboard (one of my favorite of the easy ways to plant mycellium is to first get it to attach and grow onto two pieces of clean cardboard, moist and in a plastic ziplock, then insert this mycellium sandwich into a wood chip bed). but then again some types of mushrooms this wont work.
one of the interesting ways to grow mushrooms is to drill holes into logs, and get the mycellium into these holes, on dowels or tiny chips...and so you can have these stacked in a tiny log cabin style on the ground...with many holes drilled into them...and from there the mushrooms will pop out the holes. this is one way i have grown some previously.

Hello Caitlin,

Everything you mentioned in your plan sounds like a good idea.  It is great that you got advice from Redhawk also.  Redhawk has helped me al lot and in my early phase of growing Wine Caps as he helped nudge me in the right direction.  

Also, I have to commend you for trying to restore ground that has been essentially abused.  I imagine that gold mining is extremely hard on topsoil, and what is left over is not exactly bursting with fertility.  Fear not though--I am confident that you can restore the vitality to even that abused subsoil and mushrooms are a great way to do do it.  Prior to growing mushrooms, I basically saw soil in the conventional form, meaning soil as a bunch of chemicals with a little biology thrown in.  In this view the chemistry produced the biology and if you wanted more biology you started by adding in more chemistry.  Mushrooms changed this for me, turned it upside down.  I now see soil as a bunch of biology with a bit of chemistry thrown in.  If I want more biology (like tomatoes), I start with biology in the soil which will work to bring the already existing chemistry to the plant roots.  I am pretty sure that you have chemistry in that degraded sub-soil, but I bet it is lacking in biology and adding mushrooms (actually fungi, but we are getting into semantics) is a great way to add that biology.

Regarding using straw bales as a sort of raised bed edging, This will work fine but probably only for one year.  Maybe if you are lucky you will get two years out of them.  The Wine Caps will really break down the straw bales.  I am not saying don't use them, only saying that they are probably temporary edging materials.  My garden beds, sitting on a flat surface, use Oak and Hickory logs and they are being beat up by the Wine Caps, especially the Oak logs which are now only barely recognizable as having once been logs.  I am really needing to replace them soon, as in the next few weeks!  I am thinking about using cinder blocks/cement blocks, but this is a discussion you can have down the road if you need.

If you are planning on filling with woodchips (probably containing eucalyptus) mixed with straw and coffee grounds all of which wetted down with diluted urine and covered with more straw, I think this plan will work quite well for both helping out the Wine Caps and overcoming any resistance to decay the eucalyptus may have.  The south side of the slope should help give you protection from direct sunlight and the topping with a straw layer should help prevent evaporation losses.  The only part I can possibly add to this is to consider some type of companion plant to plant right in the bed, but in this case, whatever that plant would be, it would have to be a shade tolerant plant.  I have found that having a growing plant in the mushroom bed helps the mushrooms grow while the mushrooms help the plants grow--it is a true symbiotic relationship.  However, given your southern slope, I understand if this is not practical.

One last note that I can add that may help reduce evaporation losses.  Another user here was working with me to get his first mushroom patch up and started but he hit upon a really great idea that I now consider to be a standard part of a mushroom bed build.  After getting your woodchips (or whatever you base is going to use) established and inoculated with spawn, consider adding a layer of two of newspaper, topped by the layer of straw,  The newspaper really helped to control the evaporation losses and his bed grew actual fruiting mushrooms in 6 months where mine took about a year!  The only part I don't like about this step is that I wished it was actually my idea in the first place!  But seriously, this is what Permies is for--to help share knowledge and experience and this little gem of an idea is a great one and is now a part of my standard practice.

Caitlin, I could keep going on and on.  I hope this gives you some insight into how you might be able to get your first mushroom bed started.  As always, fire away with questions or comments is you have them.

Eric

Caitlin, I have to make one small correction.  I see that you are planning on planting in fertile holes.  This is about perfect!  I think you will be happy with the results.  The fungi and plant roots will grow symbiotically with both benefiting.

Excellent idea Caitlin!

Eric

This maybe old new to some of you, but I thought I would post it for anyone who did not know.
This is a comany, I have heard of, but have never used, so this is NOT an endorsement, just thought it was interseting.

Joe, everyone,

Just as a commentary and not as a specific endorsement, Field and Forest is the company from which I buy my mushroom substrate.  They are definitely a real company, they are quite knowledgeable and will answer just about any question I have for them.

Eric