Strategies to Incorporate Mushroom Production into Food Forests

I want to incorporate the permanent production of edible mushrooms within a food forest. One option I have considered is inoculating Inga feuillei (pacae) with Pleurotus djamor on the stumps. However, I understand that in order to maintain production, I would need to cut down a pacae every few years and inoculate the resulting stump.
My question is: besides using the stump as a substrate for the mushrooms, what other functions or ecological benefits would there be from cutting a pacae every two years within the forest?

What other strategies can You think of?

Thanks

R.

How come you want to grow it on pacae stumps specifically? It seems a quite useful tree (edible, nitrogen fixer, etc) and if I've understood it correctly, Pleurotus species can grow on a very wide variety of wood types. Do you have too many pacae trees?

Maybe soil dwelling fungi would work, like Agaricus and others—or mycorrhizal ones? I have the same issue—I want to grow more mushrooms but don’t want to cut down trees!

What about growing mushrooms in the food forest using another substrates like wood chips, straw, coffee grounds, or compost?

This way you get to keep that tree.

I'm a tree hugger and I love growing mushrooms too, so sometimes I cut down big branches off my hardwoods to grow shiitake, oysters, lion's mane, etc. I also use trees and branches that fall down during storms, checking them carefully for pre-existing fungi. That way, I don't have to cut down any big oak or chinquapin trees.

Like Anne said, there are lots of other substrates besides logs. Every single time I go out, I'm always looking for free wood chips, cardboard, horse manure, sawdust, coffee grounds- stuff like that. On public land, I also look for wild oyster logs that I can fit in my car. Oysters are also easy to grow on wood pellets (for stoves) and unsprayed straw.

if you have access to cow manure compost, you might try almond agaricus. There is a strain that grows well in places like tropical South America where it can be grown in raised beds outside. Here's a link to how to grow it in boxes:

https://permies.com/t/33807/Growing-Portabellos-wild

You also might try getting a good field guide to mushrooms or joining a mushroom club for a foray. You can really improve your ID skills rapidly this way and collect all kinds of good food and medicine in no time.

Finally, Paul Stamets has two books on this topic: Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and Mycelium Running. Good luck!

Thank you! I should have thought of tree limbs!

I missed a terribly good opportunity. Someone I knew was having trees pruned and they got taken away before I had a chance to ask to bring some home. Maybe I’ll find more by some roadside. There is a lot of wood around—burn piles, roadside wood piles, waste wood in all kinds of places.

In the book on syntropic agriculture it is explained that there are many situations where plants or trees must be cut. For example, there are times when you can plant two plants belonging to the emergent stratum, one with slow growth and another with fast growth. When the emergent tree surpasses the taller one in size, it is cut down because it has already fulfilled its function. This means that there are various situations in which cutting a tree can be functional for forest design. That is my question. In what ways can cutting down a tree be functional? I want to design where cutting down pacae trees (not just for producing mushrooms) in 15 years can be justified.

Eino Kenttä wrote:How come you want to grow it on pacae stumps specifically? It seems a quite useful tree (edible, nitrogen fixer, etc) and if I've understood it correctly, Pleurotus species can grow on a very wide variety of wood types. Do you have too many pacae trees?

Because pacae con serve many functions and it's also god for growing different local mushrooms. I don't have any pacae yet. I want to dona design where cutting trees can be justified. Read My previous answer.

Ronaldo Montoya wrote:I want to incorporate the permanent production of edible mushrooms within a food forest. One option I have considered is inoculating Inga feuillei (pacae) with Pleurotus djamor on the stumps. However, I understand that in order to maintain production, I would need to cut down a pacae every few years and inoculate the resulting stump. ...

What other strategies can You think of?

Can you do tree topping and use the cut from the tree topping instead of cutting the tree down?

Tree topping is an pruning method where most of the tree's crown is removed leaving only lateral branches and a stump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_topping

How much / often do you get rain?   One perk of growing on stumps is that the roots still pull moisture from deep for a while.   I'm basing that statement on watching where wild oyster mushrooms thrive here in Texas.   It gets dry here on the regular, even in the east side of the state, and I've noticed that the oysters prefer dead trees that are still connected to the root system.

Also, in noticing failed mushroom growing attempts around here, that started with the inoculation of logs;  the problem is that everything dries out.   So, whatever you do, make sure that you maintain wet humid conditions.   I use wood shavings or sawdust in a plastic bucket with a lose fitting lid (the fun guys need oxygen and humidity).   I am looking for a way to get around using the plastic buckets, but for now that's the easiest way.   I'm thinking of making some pottery vessels and sealing the outside with glaze.   Another thing to try is to bury your branches in dirt, hugelkulture style, to help hold some moisture in that wood.   My Hugel bed recently fruited some wild ink-caps.  I never inoculated those logs, but that's the plan for a future hugel-bed so hopefully I'll get lion's mane or something better than ink-caps.  Maybe you can use a 55 steel drum to inoculate the branches and get your desired mycelium a head start 1st  ...I'll report back once I've tried that.

Main thing is that for anyone in a dry-ish area ... you can't underestimate how much moisture and humidity you need to provide.   I only grow shrooms in the cooler wetter half of the year.