Very green wood chips for mushrooms

I have had a bad garden year, flooding and losing massive amounts of plants to fungus. So I decided to work with the trend, and ordered Stropharia spawn on sawdust  :D

Had a hard time getting any wood chip, and when I did, 3/4 of the pile was small branch shred, lots of sticks, but a LOT of leaves in it all too. The other 1/4 is excellent brown chips.

The green part sat for less than an hour before it started heating up. That's fast, up there with grass clippings.

So my question is do I use the spawn tomorrow, or let the chip get over it's hot phase before I do?
If I wait, will the chip get too colonized by the local fungi collection? Few shrooms around, but lots of plant leaf damage type fungus. Spawn is hanging out in a chilly room, still in it's packing.

Advice would be welcomed!



I took more close up pictures too, but they don't show how green it really is, can post them if wanted.

Hi Pearl.  Sorry it took me so long to get to this thread.

My suggestion is to mix those two piles together and then spread out about 6 inches thick.  By spreading the geometry should not be conducive to hot decomposition, but slow decomposition should help the stropharia get going.  I would mix the spawn in soon before the pile gets colonized by other fungi.

Good Luck!!

Eric

I agree with what Eric has presented.

I would get my best fungal establishment on the 'fringes' of the pile and not the center when I left it in a composting type setup.  Winecaps have some tough mycelium and compete well in my area.

I already did it, didn't want it colonized by others. I spread all the chip out flat for 2 nights, then the next day layered it in, using the two types differently, so they did not end up mixed.

I have some chip left, it is currently in a wading pool, covered with a tarp, for lack of a better place to put it. I had bought two five pound bags of spawn, I put one and a half bags into the chips, saved the other half in a cool spot as backup. Been watering it, will check it soon to see if it seems to have worked. If so, I'll add the remaining spawn and chip in a top layer. At the moment, the bed doesn't feel hot like a compost pile. That's what I didn't want. I'm hoping letting the leaves in the green stuff dry out before it was used helped.