Mulch. Just do it.

[SoooHaggard]

Is that to say a colonized substrate that fruits mushrooms and excretes plant beneficial secondary metabolites while breaking down organic matter isnt alive?

IMO planting the proper fungi/w organic matter, is far more beneficial than any plant life you could pair with your garden.


One with Fungus,

FE

I think Sean is pointing out that the term "Living Mulch" is currently being used to describe planting the clover or bahia grass to keep the fungi thriving if you No-Till your pots like some members.

I have also seen people use the clover to get the soil mix working before transplanting into it, I plan to start messing around with this very very soon myself.

Also being able to cut down all the clover as a mulch right before flower seems to be a pretty good idea to me.

HaGGarD

 

[Durdy]

Chopped and dropped 12 days ago, then covered in compost and watered with whatever everything else was getting. Transplanted some very root bound plants into it last night.

Will report back with results shortly

 

[jenery]

living mulch till the end

living mulch till the end



Hello everyone, two photos of the living mulch, tossing the defoliated dying leaves on top during the flowering to make nice humus. The mulch is still doing fine, will harvest chamomile and mapacho leaves after the chop and then recycle the soil, very interested to see the roots in these grow bags.

 

[3rdEye]

Jenery thanks for adding to this thread. I love chamomile and i am glad that other people are trying it. Good luck and your plants look happy.

thanks to all the contributors again.

 

[MrSterling]

Always an interesting topic. I tried chamomile once but found it suffered in the shade of the plant canopy.

 

[unthing]

clover under shade, vertical light tho. i dont see any water retention benefit in this scale but its fun. fruiting fungi would be too have get on to it..this is in later flowering so it made through

 

[xmobotx]

thats doing pretty good in the shade and for as advanced as the plant looks

@ least for me anyway; my living mulches dont make it too far into flower {this last time it was mice -lol}

 

[unthing]

trimming underside and and some huge fans dropping helped. last time i tried this it barely made in the sides in a horizontal setup. hope this time can continue the cycle so i can see how it makes in the long run.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

So whats everyone using as their indoor mulch?

I use either perlite (yeah i know but it is hassle free, reflects light, keeps the moisture evenly distributed and is easy to water evenly through) or a mixture of leaves/dry flowers, biochar, compost and coco coir. (great diversity but bringing in fungus gnats)

I am thinking of getting some barley straw or the like... and having very well processed vermicast and biochar underneath.

 

[Durdy]

I have one plant mulched with Barley Straw, love it! everything else just 1.5" of EWC. I need to get another bale of the straw to get everything mulched as well

 

[al-k-mist]

I was wondering what peoples thought of madrone leaves?
Im gathering soil from under some madrones to mix into and topdress the filberts (hazelnuts) to get some ectomycorizzae going, but that looks like hella good mulch?
Any experience? its a harrrrrrd wood. very hard. best firewood in oregon, i hear.
Dank you

 

[W89]

bump

 

[TanzanianMagic]

Masanobu Fukuoka

Masanobu Fukuoka

that is pretty sweet. After reading fukuoka book I have been extremely interested in trying the living mulch out.

I presume you are talking about the One Straw Revolution?

If you haven't read it, you should really also check out his workbook:

Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy, by Masanobu Fukuoka.

It has a lot of details about crop rotation and practical implementation of his ideas. I have no experience with it yet, but I wonder what the impact of living mulch would be on True Living Organics, or Super Soil. You could have a continous recycling of nutrients, and maybe even cut down on 'cooking' time.

It is a shame there isn't a permanent Fukuoka thread.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=41033&pictureid=1029704&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

By the way, the plant in the picture is begging for 2 or 3 more inches of soil to be shoveled on top of the surface - it is shooting roots and pre-roots from it's stem.

 

[Neo 420]

White clover in no till 8g container. The clovers in this instance gave me a water saving advantage. The areas with the crowded clovers would generally be moist on the rare occasions the no clovers areas (near the stem) would start to dry out.

 

[unthing]

i was wondering what caused it. prob not gonna add any for this round since it's weeks from finishing but i'll topdress for the next one anyway since there's space to fill. i also thought that maybe it was surface moisture promoting it but not really sure.

By the way, the plant in the picture is begging for 2 or 3 more inches of soil to be shoveled on top of the surface - it is shooting roots and pre-roots from it's stem.

has anybody done this long enough to make some definitive conclusions and is there scalar issues or something like that? living mulch indoors i mean.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

i was wondering what caused it. prob not gonna add any for this round since it's weeks from finishing but i'll topdress for the next one anyway since there's space to fill. i also thought that maybe it was surface moisture promoting it but not really sure.

I know the roots will be competing with the flowers for phosphorus. If it's weeks away (before flushing, if it's not organic), then you'd be feeding them with new soil. Also, you can make topdressed soil pretty hot, because the roots that grow into it will self-prune and there will be no rootburn. If you are growing organic, you could just add rock phosphate and pot ash.

 

[Durdy]

I need to start burning my citrus rinds (I get buckets and buckets of em)

The ash apparently has around 31 as it's K# only second to banana peel ash I hear.

Or I could just keep chucking em in whole, takes about 3 weeks for em to disappear into the abyss

 

[W89]

Cocoa shells is what I use for mulch,

 

[Neo 420]

Living mulch...

No till....