My first mushroom cultivation: wine cap

Hi permies!

I want to get into mushroom cultivation, as I believe it will be a great addition to the diversity in my produce, diet, and backyard ecology :-)

From my beginner's research, it seems that wine cap mushrooms would be my best option for a hardy, productive, low-input, forgiving, beginner's mushroom species. And it would perennialize in my 6b climate.

It seems like the best method for creating a perennial wine cap bed is to:
- create a 3" layer of hardwood chips
- spread spawn on top
- repeat until around a foot high
- use soaked straw
- add 3" of chips/straw after each flush

*Do you have any personal experience with growing wine caps, and lessons you have learned along the way?

Also, it has been suprisingly hard finding fresh hardwood chips! I am kind of in a strange situation, as my car is not big enough to pick up big piles of chips I see on fb marketplace, and I have only seen softwood chips at the local chain stores. It would be great if I could get it free, though! :-)

*Tips and experience with finangling free hardwood chips?

Thanks for your input!!

Winecaps are an incredibly forgiving species of mushroom to start cultivating. It was my first foray into mycelium-based permaculture but it got me hooked.

A good chunk of edible mushrooms grow on hardwood chips, but of course there are a bunch of other uses which makes getting your hands on them for free a challenge. I have utilized the service Chipdrop to get free woodchips before but I never have received a straight hardwood chip delivery. I suppose you could put that in as an ask but it is a gamble if anyone would have availability.

The work-around involves the fact that winecaps have a somewhat diverse diet. They will also consume forest debris and leaves. Kind of like some substitutions for baking, you don't need to have PURE hardwood chips to get winecaps to grow. You can look at things such as straw, leaves, wood millings and shavings, chopped woody debris. I have grown winecaps in primarily softwood which had a small amount of hardwood in it with limited success.

Welcome to Permies. There are many threads about growing wine caps here, however one of the most useful is Eric Hanson’s

https://permies.com/t/80/82798/composting/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter

Keep us posted on your progress. Wine caps are very rewarding, I still have a large jar that I dehydrated over two years ago!

Also, it would be sooper cool one day to have even lower maintainence, long-term 'meadow' mushrooms that casually coexist in my little backyard ecosystem; like puffball, morels, chanterelles (especially because chanterelles are mycorrhizal shroomies)...

Do you experienced mycelial stewards know of any low-maintainence, long-term mushroom species that would simply "exist" in my little 6b sanctuary? If so that would be very cool, and I would love to know about their specifics and that would be required for their integration into my ecosystem.

𖥧 𓅪  𓋼𓍊 𖤣𖥧 𓆨  𓍊

When I made my second hugelkultur bed (that I will soon showcase!), I made an effort to put some mycelial logs from my local forest into the hugel.
I was so thrilled when I found the first tiny little unknown mushroom pop out the hugel... so neat.
I personally love the idea of a 'foraging garden', where there is mystery and suprise nearly every day. So having mushrooms popping up in random niches of my garden would be very magical :-D

Awesome, thanks for the input!

Tim--

Can you elaborate on your success with growing winecaps in primarily softwood with some hardwood?
From what I have seen online, growing mushrooms in softwood is generally a no-go, so it is interesting that you have had some succes with this.
Some local landscape supply stores do have mixes of hard and softwood chips, would you reccomend this, or try to go a different route?

Megan--

Thanks for the reference, I will check it out now :)

Julian Mastromatteo wrote: Can you elaborate on your success with growing winecaps in primarily softwood with some hardwood?
From what I have seen online, growing mushrooms in softwood is generally a no-go, so it is interesting that you have had some succes with this.
Some local landscape supply stores do have mixes of hard and softwood chips, would you reccomend this, or try to go a different route?

Of course!

Some background, I subscribe to utilizing deep mulch in my perennial grow spaces along with pathways. This has improved the soil underneath immensely as well as made weeding a breeze. A lot of information online said not to utilize softwoods due to a myriad of reasons but I think they are mostly overstated. The bed I have in mind in particular was made up of mostly arborvitae and pine but I intermixed some siberian elm. I added some sawdust spawn when I first placed down the mixed woodchip (over a layer of kraft paper which was a temporary weed barrier) and waited a few months. Soon enough I was getting flushes all over the place. The whole idea is that the deep mulch breaks down and feeds the soil. Besides environmental and physical breakdown, I wanted to add a fungal element to speed up breaking down difficult lignins found in woody substances. Winecaps work as microscopic recycling machines and ideally start building the topsoil layer underneath over time.

Softwood Chipped Space

I personally don't like the landscape chips offered by stores due to the potential for dyes or issues with the feedstock that they make chips from. I prefer to get my hands on fresh chips that contain everything from the tree. I let this sit in a pile for a short time in order to let the white rot fungus to go through and start the initial decomposition. I have an idea that this white rot phase helps break down the natural preservatives and sap that softwood has to allow other funguses to inoculate it. I'm not a biologist but I highly recommend the book Mycelium Running which first presented this idea to me.

Winecap growing on edge of lawn and chipped bed.

Julian Mastromatteo wrote:I personally love the idea of a 'foraging garden', where there is mystery and suprise nearly every day. So having mushrooms popping up in random niches of my garden would be very magical

I too love this idea! I don't know whether this sort of thing is available in the US but I used the chaos Fungorum edible forest garden mix from https://www.pembrokeshireagroforestry.co.uk/chaosfungorum (via the Agroforestry Research Trust) to help give some of my trees a start in building good fungal relationships. Hopefully the mix will have helped in establishing the trees and as a bonus I will maybe get edible mushrooms in future. Whether I'll recognise them is another matter! I'm pretty confident on morels, puffballs and chanterelles....I was lucky enough to come across a ripe giant puffball locally a couple of years ago, which I cut up and spread around in the hope that it would take

I have had success with sawdust from a local factory, covered or layered with dead maple leaves. Success meaning mycelium, but this is my first year and I have yet to see mushrooms. I have never been able to make wood chips a practical source of woody debris so have had to make do with sawdust instead—but find that in many ways it’s just as beneficial. (It is especially good for making paths less muddy, and quickly transforming an area of compacted soil. The worms love it!)

Thank you all for the great information and advice!

Tim--
Thank you for the follow-up!
Letting softwood chips decompose to eliminate antifungal compounds is a really interesting idea that I haven't heard of until now.

Apparently, there is a wood chip dump (random wood types) site at a park near me, so I will make sure to check there, now that I know about this technique. My property is way too small for chip drops lol!!

Nancy--
The Chaos Fungorum edible forest garden mix is really interesting.
I did some research for Canadian alternatives, and I came across 'Root Rescue', an endo/ecto mycorrhizal powder mix, suited for both woody and non-woody plants, which would be a big benefit to a food forest.
*Generally, ectomycorrhizal fungi interact with trees, and endomycorrhizal fungi interact with shrubs and herbaceous plants. Endomycorrhizal fungi do not fruit/produce mushrooms.*
It seems that the Chaos Fungorum edible forest garden mix is solely ectomycorrhizal fungi, as it says that all of the species within the mix are edible--endomycorrhizal fungi do not fruit/produce mushrooms (this suprised me), so it must not be in the mix. So, it seems that the mix would be great for supporting trees and producing mushrooms, but would not benefit most shrubs and herbaceous plants--more suited for forest gardens comprised of mostly trees.
Something new I learned about mycorrhizae today, and thought that it might help you and others in your future food foresting goals! :)  
𖠰 𓍊𓋼 𖣂𖥧

I'm jealous!! I hope that I come upon a ripe puffball in the near future. I have a stump in my backyard that is inhabited by turkey tail fungi; so when they fruit I am going to try to create my own innoculant!
I need to do some more research on it, but turkey tail seems to be somewhat of an immune system miracle supplement.

Maieshe--
I haven't thought about using sawdust and dead leaves as a primary growth medium until this point; that is a good thought.
I was unaware until this point that sawdust helps compacted soil, and that worms love it; that's great info. If I happen upon sawdust before good woodchips, I will make sure to start growing with sawdust first.

Julian,

I am late to this party, but I need to say a word or two.  Firstly, great instincts in thinking about mushrooms and fungi as a way to add overall fertility to your ground.  This method works very well with a no-dig gardening system.  And the results, while needing a bit of time and patience, are well worth the effort.

Regarding your search for chips, if you can’t find 100% hardwood chips, don’t be afraid to try something else instead.  Since you are using Wine Caps—an excellent mushroom for this type of project—you can hardly go wrong.  Perhaps give your chips some straw to really get the fungi growing.


If you are so inclined, I can point you in the direction of a lot of my experiences that I have documented here on Permies.



Good luck!!


Eric

Hi Eric,
The party only just started!!

It would be great if you could point me in the direction of your experiences with mushroom cultivation :)
I believe that being exposed to some anecdotes and information would give me a great head start.

Thank ya!