building fungal soil

ive been reading and watching a lot of videos on Dr Elain Inghams soil food web stuff and have learned that i need a fungal soil ( I work on a u-pick farm mainly producing strawberries blackberries and raspberries) I was wondering if just mixing the spent bags from growing mainly oyster mushrooms would be a shortcut to achiving these soils or is this the wrong type of fungi I was thinking of mixing these mycilium bags in with the more bacterial compost to ament the beds before planting.im also planning to mulch all the walkways between the beds with woodchips the encourage the fungal soils.

Our daughter has a mushroom farm that she visits often to get mushroom compost.  

While I feel it is great stuff to add to your soil and it certainly can't hurt the soil.

Mushroom compost will add organic materials and can also be used as a top dressing.

I believe our daughter mixes it with a ratio of one part mushroom compost to two parts soil.

As I said mushroom compost can't hurt though to answer your question, I have no idea if it will make the soil fungal.

How does Dr. Ingham's Soil Food Web suggest building the soil to make it fungal?

I’d spread the spent mushroom media and compost, in any order, then cap it all off with woodchips.  I wouldn’t mix it in the soil at all, let the worms and other critters do that for you.

Not all mycellium will bind with all plants. My mother (and local fungi expert) mentioned yesterday that maples, for instance, do not develop a symbiotic relationship with anything. She mentioned that blueberries, in particular, are picky about the type of mycellium they need. This thread talks about the issue:

https://permies.com/t/14396/mycorrhizal-fungi-blueberries


So researching the specific type of mycellium for your plants and trying to source that could be an option.

That said, compost can't hurt, and it's likely to be a medium where the naturally occuring mycellium is likely to thrive.

Kena said, "So researching the specific type of mycellium for your plants and trying to source that could be an option.

That said, compost can't hurt, and it's likely to be a medium where the naturally occuring mycellium is likely to thrive.

This thread might be a good example of why it is good to research the specific type of mycellium for your plants.

https://permies.com/t/188926/Rapid-increase-fertility-needed

I believe in that thread Scott decided that cabbage does not do well in fungal soil and needs bacterial soil.

I am now interested in finding out the difference between fungal soil and bacterial soil.  I still have this question:

Anne said, 'How does Dr. Ingham's Soil Food Web suggest building the soil to make it fungal?

Oyster mushrooms are awesome, amazing wood decomposers.  If you have the compost, it might go very well with some wood chip or straw mulch which will eventually break down into very fertile garden bedding.

Eric

Anne Miller wrote:
How does Dr. Ingham's Soil Food Web suggest building the soil to make it fungal?

I'm not sure what Dr Ingham suggests but did find this on an old post by Andrew Shreiber:

Andrew Schrieber wrote:My understanding that fungal dominated soil communities arise out of two dynamics associated with communities of woody plants.

1. White-rot fungi are better at breaking down Lignin (woody material) than bacteria. Where woody mulch/inputs prevails, fungi will tend to be a primary decomposer.
2. Woody plant communities tend to have a much more carbon rich soil, where nutrients are more dispersed. Fungi can transport themselves WAY FASTER than bacteria. Soils that are bacterially dominant tend to to be more nutrient dense around the root zones of plants, because the bacteria can't move through the soil as fast. i.e. They require worms/insects to help transport them.

Expanding on point 2 a bit, fungi need undisturbed soil to thrive; if the soil has been tilled that will benefit aerobic bacteria as they feed on the rush of nutrients released by plant and other matter that has been killed by the disturbance, but the fungi will take longer to recover.

So my suggestion for developing fungal soil would be to mulch it with carbon rich woody material (wood chips!) and then leave it for several years. If you want a particular strain of fungi then you could add suitable spawn with the wood chips I suppose.

In my experience, soil has the ability to host all sorts of good fungi to benefit our growies but the conditions need to be correct for the fungi to show up. Adding mushroom compost is one way to improve the soil to attract these fungal populations but this can be accomplished with many other sources of organic material. The fungi you desire most likely exists already in the soil, it just needs better conditions to thrive.

My focus with garden fungi is that there are two groups of fungi that ultimately assist our plants in growing. We have fungi that are decomposers that primarily break down organic matter and leave behind nutrients that plants benefit from and then there are mycorrhizal fungi that benefit plants through a symbiotic relationship in the soil where they exchange nutrients with each other. I see a lot of decomposer based fungi in my cold compost piles and I place the majority of my attention towards mycorrhizal fungi that exists inside the soil I growing plants in.

One of them main things that has benefited my quest to obtain fungal dominated soils is to minimize soil disturbance as much as possible. Mushroom hyphae (the threadlike structures found in soil) are rather sensitive to disturbances and the less we till the soil the more expansive the network can be. Almost, if not as, important as minimizing soil disturbance is to keep living roots in the soil in order for the fungi to have something to live symbiotically with. The fungi cannot photosynthesis and needs the plant roots in order to get the nutrients it needs from in order to survive. This doesn't mean that I do not harvest, but it means that I try to plan overlapping succession plants to keep the fungi thriving. If you do not have roots in the soil, you are probably going to have a challenge in maintaining fungal rich soils.

In summary, focus on boosting the organic matter levels in your growing spaces. Grow mycorrhizal fungi friendly plants in minimally disturbed soil while doing your best to keep living roots in said soil. By doing this, you should see the fungal population grow in your spaces.