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Help me build a hedge wall.

 
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Location: Eastern North Carolina
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So thought.
Can I grow mushrooms around my plants? If I build up the berm with leaf and yard debris, allowing a 1-2' clear area around berry plants, I should be good right? And once everything breaks down it'll be super healthy for runners, and I can just add more debris where I can, just to keep building it up and keep the system going.
 
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John,

That is the basic idea.  You will have to work out some initial starting materials, but once you successfully inoculate a patch, as long as you add more material each year, the mushrooms just keep coming.  Even better, the compost they leave behind is amazingly fertile.  Sometimes I have inoculated wood chips, not gotten actual mushrooms but the wood still broke down to wonderful bedding material that feeds the plants.  Of course, actual mushrooms are always preferable but I think that you can’t go wrong with Wine Caps, or a good many other fungi.

Eric
 
pollinator
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John Bolling wrote:So thought.
Can I grow mushrooms around my plants? If I build up the berm with leaf and yard debris, allowing a 1-2' clear area around berry plants, I should be good right? And once everything breaks down it'll be super healthy for runners, and I can just add more debris where I can, just to keep building it up and keep the system going.



This is not a bad idea.  Mushrooms can be a great addition to any polyculture, and a great tool for building up your top soil.  As Eric pointed out, wine cap (AKA king stropharia) might be a good choice for your intended application.  Just a general note: be sure to research your intended mushroom species well to ensure that it will work in your berm.  Many fungi do not thrive in direct sunlight, and so are often used under an established vegetative canopy, not during early establishment as you are proposing.
 
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Eric is right: Making a mixture of brambles would not work so well with the cross pollination. Blueberries require acid soil so you would not want to mix them in either.
Have you ever tried layering your brambles? That is the fastest way to get a solid hedge from just a few plants. The first year, take advantage of their pliability in the spring to bend them down all the way. Go heavy on the nitrogen: You want a lot of green growth, Sacrifice the fruit for the first year. Pin them if you have to, cover them with a bit of dirt. You are going for a lot of vegetative growth. [You will still get plenty of raspberries! You will establish a pretty solid row [Every few inches on this first cane, you will get a new plant if you proceed like this]. Do it again the second year and perhaps the next until you are satisfied with the impenetrability of your hedge.
The canes are biennial, growing in year one, fruiting in year 2 dying in year 3. You must not neglect removing the dead canes in year 3 and every succeeding year: they invite bad bugs, make picking a miserable chore, they weaken the plant as long as they are attached to it. You may lay them alongside/ widen the row by using the clippings. For a healthy hedge, you will also need mulch. The dead canes can be part of that mulch.
It isn't that hard as the dead canes, at the end of the season will be brown while the new canes will be green. 500 feet is a freaking lot of canes to deal with, though. Courage! There will be lots of raspberries to enjoy!
 
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