Ian Påf

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.

Joshua Frank wrote:For what it's worth, I cooked them up last night with butter, shallots, and good salt and they were delicious, and I seem to still be here.

Yum......

Those a pretty clearly pink oysters, and there's not a lot you could mistake them for given the color. I'm not familiar with the vendor, but chances are they're using a strain from another grower, not one that they isolated from the wild, since pink oysters aren't easily found in the wild.

May I ask the name of the spawn producer?

I find this matrix from North Spore Mushroom Co. to be useful. According to it, Chestnut and Nameko are the best for ash. But keep in mind there might be less-commonly grown mushrooms that would also work!

First could be deer mushroom. Fourth probably witch's butter. Don't eat anything based on my guesses though! Second perhaps some species of Agrocybe.

Jeff Steez wrote:(1lb flour * 0.14) * .75 = VWG/lb wheat.

That would make 10% yield if I follow?

Juan Ramirez wrote:For my machine It would be ideal to have already pulled out the plants so that you may just toss the insavie species into the grinder so that any remains that could regrow get crushed. In your opinion do you believe my machine should have some sort of feature that aids in pulling out the plants from their roots?

I misunderstood, my bad! I think pulling roots might be too big of a feature to add, at least for the time being! Still worth considering that if you are grinding roots, there may be small rocks and tough roots to deal with.

As someone who has spent perhaps hundreds of hours removing invasive plants manually, I would absolutely consider using such a product. Especially on a homestead scale, it would be great to be able to use the biomass as mulch (etc.). I'm not familiar with cheatgrass, but I can offer some thoughts on invasive plant removal generally:

- Most of the invasives I've worked with regrow from roots, so if this device were to be effective against perennial plants, it would need to able to pull and kill the roots. I suppose this wouldn't a problem for annuals if you get them at the right time of year. Something to consider depending on what you want the scope of this device to be.
- Some invasives can also regrow from very small fragments (looking at you, knotweed), so chopping/grinding actually does more to spread the plant than to get rid of it. Again, not a problem for a lot of plants, so consider the scope of application.
- Removing invasive plants manually can be quite exhausting. If a device could make the task physically less demanding, that would be a huge benefit. In this case, that might look like incorporating a motor, or, if driven by hand, having large mechanical advantage
- I've also worked with some aquatic invasives (e.g., Phragmites, arundo). Again, a question of the scope of application, but being able to operate the device on wet ground/shallow water could open it up to use on these plants.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:In theory, using the largest as seed stock will eventually result in a higher percentage of large ones.

But, garlic plants tend to be clones. Which means there probably isn't much genetic variability between plants, except for the occasional sport or mutation. You might get better results by comparing the soil and growing conditions the different sizes were pulled from, and trying to mimic whatever made the biggest bulbs.

My understanding is that garlic clones are able to adapt epigenetically to your specific climate / soil. The resulting epigenetic variability allows you to select for larger heads as well.

Here's an interested study on the epigenetic diversity over time in garlic: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.scienta.2018.04.044.

Could purslane be useful as a living mulch? In my experience it grows fairly low to the ground and would not compete with most crops for light... but most farmers I've worked for haven't been too keen on having it around...