Mycelium in the Garden - Part 1 Update 1

Mycelium in the Garden - Part 1 Update 1

It's been roughly 3 weeks since the first mycelium in the garden experiment was conducted.

In Part 1 of this series, I show how the experiment using newspaper, hay, and oyster mushroom substrate was used as a sheet mulch to see how the introduction of mycelium might enhance the biodiversity in the garden.

So yesterday I pushed back the hay in a few spots to see if anything was happening. In the image below, you can clearly see that the newspaper is starting to become less distinguishable as newspaper. What might be more difficult to see is that the reason why this is happening is because of a white growth beginning on the surface. That would be mycelium establishing itself. Yay!

An even keener eye may spot the odd green patch on the newspaper. This is seed from the hay that has germinated and is growing. This was expected. Stay tuned to see if it turns into pasture.

The next photo shows a different area I uncovered at random. You can see the grass seedlings much better in this shot, and you can also see that the mycelium are colonizing the newspaper much faster. You might also be able to spot white patches on the hay, which means that the mycelium are advancing into the upper mulch layer.

So far so good. Stay tuned for more updates!

Mycelium in the Garden - Part 2

Mycelium in the Garden - Part 2

In part 1 of this series, I talked about my intentions for introducing mycelium into the garden and documented the first experiment which involved newspaper, used coffee grounds, and hay (not straw) in a shady spot in the garden.

In this post, I'm going to talk about my second experiment. This one involves utilizing the space beneath my bean and pea frames which gets too shady to grow much of anything as the summer advances.

This experiment will be making use of newspaper, used coffee grounds, and straw (not hay) as I want to see if there really is a difference between the two mulches.

The space under the climbing frame has grown thick with weeds, so I simply piled the newspaper over the top of them.  I did pull a few of the weeds from around the newspaper edges, and stuffed them under to make it look neat and tidy.

Once I had a good thick layer of newspaper down, I covered it with 15 gallons of used coffee grounds. This is much thicker than with the first experiment, and I decided to do this after taking a peak under the mulch in experiment 1, and saw the mycelium really infiltrating the coffee grounds, and to my surprise, no mold!

Next I sliced the used mushroom log into disks and placed them directly on top of the used coffee grounds just like in the previous experiment.

Next, I covered the disks with a single sheet of newspaper just to help with moisture retention and wet it down so it would stay put while I collected the straw.

Finally, I covered everything with a generous layer of straw, being careful to ensure that there was no newspaper sticking out.

So that's it! Now all there is to do is sit back, let the peas grow, and see if the mycelium processes all that used coffee grounds before the freeze comes.

Mycelium in the Garden - Part 1

Mycelium in the Garden - Part 1

Gardeners often freak out when they see toadstools growing in their garden.

But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, if we replace "toadstools" with edible mushrooms then we have created another stream of productivity while at the same time fill a decomposition function within the landscape.

This post is about my experiments with mycelium not just as a source of tasty mushrooms, but as a decomposition accelerator in my sheet mulching system.

But doesn't accelerating sheet mulch decomposition mean you have to replace it more often I hear you ask? Well, yes it does. But the reason I sheet mulch is keep plant competition down, regulate soil moisture, and encourage soil biodiversity.

I actually want my soil to eat the sheet mulch and incorporate all those nutrients and organic matter into the humus. Since my sheet mulch contains a lot of woody material it makes sense that a wood eating organism will do the job for me.

I started with a used straw log that commercial mushroom growers use to grow primary decomposers like oyster mushrooms in. I could have used spawn, or a slurry, but this is what I had available to me locally.

Since the log contained oyster mushroom mycelium, I decided to incorporate used coffee grounds into the sheet mulch bed. I collected a week's worth of used coffee grounds from a local coffee shop and stored them in sealed 5 gallon pails to prevent molding.

The 4ft wide garden bed I was working with had about 6ft of available space. It had some old newspaper and straw from last season on top of the soil, and I spread out the 15 gallons of used coffee grounds as my base layer directly on top.


Next, I cut the plastic off the straw log, and sliced it up into disks about 2 inches thick. These I placed on top of the coffee grounds as shown in the images below:

After this, I layered newspaper over the top of the disks and gave it a good watering:

Finally, I covered everything up with a deep layer of hay and gave it a final watering.

Stay tuned to see how this experiment in active sheet mulching turns out!