Mounds Loaded Down with Mycelium

I had lots of mushrooms growing during the season-- the other day I dug out some mounds to check things out and pulled out some stalks.. here's what I found!

Two seasons ago I bought the cheapest soil I could get at $50/yd and fed GrowMore all year. I had mushrooms by the end of that season and when I dumped those pots last May to throw Coots on top I saw chunks of that mycelium-- I thought it was mold or something and it worried me. By breaking it all up and using that old soil as a subsoil, it's like I cased it. It loved the coots and spread all over. I had a lot of mushrooms this year. There are still some untouched mounds but after I mix everything up I guarantee by end of next season my entire soil will be at least 90% colonized.

The benefits or drawbacks are uncertain. I didn't notice any benefit on the colonized plants, but I did worry throughout the year about what I thought was the hydrophobic nature of the colonized soil. I had a lot of pooling and it seemed very difficult to wet it even with wetting agent and mulch. After investigating the mounds and seeing that the dry-looking colonized soil is actually damp (while the top uncolonized is soaked) I'm now wondering if the mycelium is retaining more water than I think and actually helping water retention.

There are some cases of mycelium doing damage to plants by hogging nutrients-- lawns for example.

Awesome! Fungus porn! Looking good.

Could you use that stuff as a base and innoculate it with spores? Ya know the good kind ,lol.

Thanks.

Different mushrooms like different conditions. I could possibly use it.... but that would be some expensive ass substrate

I dont have anywhere near that much

Might just till into your soil when you go to ammend?

Dunno but I'll be watching...that's some curious shit

Someone mentioned these were saprobes. I was just reading Graeme Sait's blog entry about P being locked out and found this:

...saprophytic fungi whose chief role is to digest cellulose and convert crop residues into precious organic carbon. The latter may well become the most important species on the planet as climate change bites and scientists finally recognise that the only way we can reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is to return it to the soil as organic carbon (humus). Cellulose-digesting fungi produce a very stable form of humus

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Cellulose-digesting fungi that can digest crop residues release acid exudates that increase the availability of locked-up P, so you can effectively kill two birds with one stone. You can turn residues into invaluable humus, while recycling your frozen P reserves.

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It happened also to my veggie garden beds! And yes, i bought cheap soil (35 $ a yard)from lanscape company , and in the end we ended up with a lots of agaricus b. portobello popping around.
What i suspect is that, this companies gather spent mushroom substrates from mushroom farm and use it in theis blends orstraigh up resellit for "mushroom compost".
waaaaay different thing from a beneficials fungi predominant type of compost that we mean...

Portobellos? That's awesome. I don't think the mushrooms that pop up out of this mycelium are edible.

While this isn't the fungi that colonize the roots of cannabis, so far it seems to be a benefit. It seems like it gives the soil a really great texture. Only thing I worry about is learning how to water with this stuff present and nutrient competition. I wish I could find some info on that.

plantingplants said:

Thanks.

Different mushrooms like different conditions. I could possibly use it.... but that would be some expensive ass substrate

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Try to get douglas-fir bark mulch, it seems to be a significant vector for psilocybe cyanensis. If you want a more reliable edible mushroom harvest, King Stropharias might be worth looking at, they grow on bark mulch, like sunshine and harvest reliably in the early fall, one of the easiest mushrooms to grow outdoor.

Hard to tell from way over here. It looks like a dry pocket in the soil. I have pulled a sickly plant out of a mound to find the roots right under the stalk completely dry like that. The mound was getting water but for some reason it just had a horrible dry pocket.

I just cut into a mound with a loader, so I was looking at the cross section of the soil. It was all evenly moist. Different layers held moisture differently but no dry pockets.

Also if the micro life is doing well, there will not be much of a root system left. Maybe a mushy stalk with worms and arthropods.


Probably good you are scooping it up and homogenizing it. Hopefully it will be less hydrophobic afterwards. The Coots looks nice and moist just that dry spot below it.

Mr^^