Fungi for wood composting

I am a very amateur mycology fanatic. I'm interested in using fungi in zone 5B to break down various species of hardwood logs and I'm not necessarily interested in a harvest, just composting.

The plan is to inoculate with a spore and then cover the logs with discarded shade cloths until they're spongy enough to disperse.

I read this article in an online magazine and it looks like a great idea. What are your thoughts on species and timeframe for breaking down?

https://bluedotliving.com/fighting-mega-fires-with-mushrooms/

From experience, mushroom logs are still not spongy enough to disperse after 3 to 5 years. I'd guess it would take 5 to 10 years or more depending on the species of wood, but I don't know.

Some fungi are primary decomposers, meaning they are the first ones to start decomposing wood when it dies. After a while, secondary and tertiary decomposers move in. You might consider inoculating your logs with a secondary decomposer after a few years, and then a tertiary decomposer a few years after that.

However, I'm not sure how much faster inoculating the logs with fungi will make the process go. Wild fungi are pretty good at moving into dead wood on their own. I suppose using a particularly vigorous species could speed up the process, but I'm speculating.

Thank you for your reply. This gives me something to think about. I'll have to look at another way to break these down quickly. I'm trying to avoid burning but that might be the only way to go.

Ian Påf wrote:From experience, mushroom logs are still not spongy enough to disperse after 3 to 5 years. I'd guess it would take 5 to 10 years or more depending on the species of wood, but I don't know.

Some fungi are primary decomposers, meaning they are the first ones to start decomposing wood when it dies. After a while, secondary and tertiary decomposers move in. You might consider inoculating your logs with a secondary decomposer after a few years, and then a tertiary decomposer a few years after that.

However, I'm not sure how much faster inoculating the logs with fungi will make the process go. Wild fungi are pretty good at moving into dead wood on their own. I suppose using a particularly vigorous species could speed up the process, but I'm speculating.

Joe,

This is a very late reply so my apologies, but I would try two different types of mushrooms, but there are some decisions that you are going to need to make for yourself.

The first choice is the Wine Cap, which is one of the easiest and most aggressive mushrooms that a newbie can start with.  Wine Caps are not all that particular about their setting—they actually like a little bit of dappled sunlight.  They grow best if they can get within about six inches of the ground as they really benefit from some soil microbes.  Being highly aggressive, they do what I call self-sterilization, meaning that they aggressively outcompete just about any other fungus out there.  They could be a very good choice.

The other choice is some variety of an oyster mushroom (Pohu is a good choice).  These are also very aggressive but do best when the log is still standing.  Much of what I already stated about Wine Caps can also be said about Oyster Mushrooms.  The difference being that Oysters don’t really like to interact with the soil the way a Wine Cap does.

Maybe your decision comes down to this:  how big around is your log?  Generally, the further from the ground, the better that Oysters will do.  The closer to soil contact, the better Wine Caps will do.

Does any of this help?

Eric

Hey Eric,

Thank you for your suggestions. I think wine cap is going to be our fungus of choice to compost and I think we already have some wild ones popping up in our composting chicken litter. We have three chicken pens that need to be aggressively cleaned out where we're going to try inoculating with wine cap, let it fruit and then send the birds in to scratch it up before scooping out the remnants and placing it on our main compost pile.

This is fun!

Joe

Sounds like a plan Joe!

So how large in diameter are the logs we are talking about?  Are you thinking about using sawdust or peg spawn?

Eric