So I made myself some CalPhos...

[calliandra]

woa had no idea. i have never really cut open my legume nodules. im finishing up a new bed of legume peas though. when i till it ill have to check this out!

Yeah my reaction too!
That streak in the garden, it was me hustling to pull a plant from the alfalfa bed, knife in hand haha

I actually just stumbled over this the other day in an online course I'm taking (about guess what ). This is the passage of the transcript of that lesson:

When we start looking at manure, we have to pay attention to the quality of the manure.
We have to pay attention to the quality of the legumes.
So, you go get a bale of lucerne. You've got lucerne hay. Is that going to be high nitrogen?
It's a legume.
But what do you have to look at to determine whether that legume is actually high nitrogen?
The growth form?
What determines whether we actually fix nitrogen in this plant or not?
The legume. Look at the nodules on the roots. So you've got to go back to the root system. You've got to pick up the nodules. You've got to cut them open. Are they red? If they're not red, this is not high nitrogen. If those nodules weren't functioning that plant material is actually now in which category? Yeah, might be there [greens]. If lucerne was cut while it was still green, it would be there.
But what if they didn't cut it until it was dry and brown? Then it's there [woody].

You know, the seed that the legume produced, the plant put a lot of its nitrogen into that seed.
So, if what you're actually getting is the legume straw and it wasn't actually fixing nitrogen, it's that (woody). Yeah, you've got to be looking. [...]
If that plant's actually fixing nitrogen, then any of the dead plant material is going to be in this category. C: N is usually 10:1, even when it's dry and brown. But if you weren't fixing nitrogen, then the stock material is going to be this. After the plant has translocated all the nitrogen out of the tissues of the rest of the plant and stuck it into the seed, the rest of that plant is now C: N ratio woody.

If we're dealing with trees; now that's a little bit different.
Yeah, and that's where this book [‘The On-Farm Composting Manual’, Cornell University Extension Service] gets to be really useful. When you're starting to separate out the different stages of growth, when you're looking
at a tree.
What if you've got a nitrogen-fixing tree - acacia? We're looking at loquat - nitrogen-fixing tree.
Well, where's the high C: N ratio material being produced in a nitrogen-fixing tree? In the leaf material, in
the roots. So, the green leafy stuff has this wide C: N ratio. The branches, the stems, the wood itself is here.
So, it may look like wood but it has a C: N ratio of 30 so you should count it as green stuff.
Isn't this fun?
Trying to figure out what you're actually dealing with.

And you know, the easier way to deal with of this is do the best you can to put in the different percentages and kind of give it a guesstimate. Put the pile together and now you monitor temperature.

-Elaine Ingham, Soil Food Web Course

It's great to share this adventure - cheers!

 

[calliandra]

ive been considering colonizing wood loving mycellium and break up the cake into my compost/leaf mould/soil/worms?(not sure theyd eat it)

that experiment of yours is looking sweeeeet

haha thanks, yeah it is!

Oh that's excellent, talk about same pages?
How were you thinking of going about the colonizing?

 

[iHearAll]

haha thanks, yeah it is!

Oh that's excellent, talk about same pages?
How were you thinking of going about the colonizing?

find wild spores of these hardy purple and orange mushrooms or some shiitake either from my log or a new bag of shiitake mycellium plugs from ebay. id probably have best luck with the shiitake i imagine. that stuff seems to WANT regular watering. at least outdoors. i should go with pasteurization versus sterilization to limit trichoderma. the only catch with shiitake would be i need oak and i think the wild stuff is less picky (but not edible). i have oak here though. probably mason jars.

https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u159/2014/Scott 2-pager final.pdf
again, im thinking a prior EM innoculation and the steam bath pasteurization versus sterilization.

 

[calliandra]

find wild spores of these hardy purple and orange mushrooms or some shiitake either from my log or a new bag of shiitake mycellium plugs from ebay. id probably have best luck with the shiitake i imagine. that stuff seems to WANT regular watering. at least outdoors. i should go with pasteurization versus sterilization to limit trichoderma. the only catch with shiitake would be i need oak and i think the wild stuff is less picky (but not edible). i have oak here though. probably mason jars.

https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u159/2014/Scott 2-pager final.pdf
again, im thinking a prior EM innoculation and the steam bath pasteurization versus sterilization.

wow, sounds complicated
Why are you so afraid of the trichoderma to go to all that trouble?

Oh and thanks for sharing those shitake growing instructions, very interesting!
I get that they'd want to sterilize if it'S for harvesting for us to eat, monocropping... lol
I wouldn't go through all that trouble just to add a monocrop to improve my soil? Or am I missing something there....

 

[DonBrennon]

wow, sounds complicated
Why are you so afraid of the trichoderma to go to all that trouble?

Love this shit, @iHearAll , I'd assume it's for the same reasons we don't wan't high volumes of 'Tricho', while we're trying to colonise young plants with endo myco............edit.............I believe high trico levels inhibit the germination of myco?

 

[iHearAll]

Love this shit, @iHearAll , I'd assume it's for the same reasons we don't wan't high volumes of 'Tricho', while we're trying to colonise young plants with endo myco............edit.............I believe high trico levels inhibit the germination of myco?

yea the green house mold stuff

 

[iHearAll]

wow, sounds complicated
Why are you so afraid of the trichoderma to go to all that trouble?

Oh and thanks for sharing those shitake growing instructions, very interesting!
I get that they'd want to sterilize if it'S for harvesting for us to eat, monocropping... lol
I wouldn't go through all that trouble just to add a monocrop to improve my soil? Or am I missing something there....

yea i was just considering having mycellium to compete with molds and stuff. i was thinking using it to to get a hardy living body into the soil really.

 

[calliandra]

yea the green house mold stuff

oh! that's what trichoderma is? lol
Ah the house mold you mean in this case is a different strain (longibrachiatum - ooo the longarmed one haha) than those being talked about in the soil (harzianum, koningii) though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoderma)

I'm very much on the fence about that characteristic of trichoderma, to inhibit the initial germination of other mycorrhizza. Personally, I took away from that discussion that the mycos and trichos actually limit each other so there'S balance I don't need to worry about.
BTW the wikipedia article links to a study (http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v2/n1/full/nrmicro797.html), whose abstract alone makes it sound like all in all trichoderma are beneficial, especially in preventing fungal diseases in plants?

Thinking on it, maybe it's a question of just having the right substrate. I mean, we want those fungi in there to process the more woody side of things (or was that just a conclusion I jumped to?) - plus I've never seen that household mold on woddy stuff.
So starting a culture on grains will not necessarily produce the herd we are looking for - as in this Longarmed One instead of the others who actually are mycorrhizally active in beneficial ways? Just a thought.
So I tend to stick to that mini-woodchip pile. Maybe mix in some known fungal food... oats? Wait a sec, thats a grain too haha
Ok I'm confused lol

Anyway, your shiitake idea reminded me that my mycos mix has all sorts of stuff in it:

Never mind the Ectomycorrhizae, but the other fungi they have in there, even if in small amounts, maybe getting those to germinate & grow would make a good basis for adding further locally sourced species? Hm!

**edit** er, maybe I should wait till after my 1st coffee when trying to think these things through haha
I just reread the ingredients, theres only endos in there, why did I think there were further ones?! Of course, we can have all those as spores in the innoculant, but that's not what we're looking to make, a living culture of diverse fungi that will take up nutrient cycling running on the woody end of the food source spectrum.
And the extra bacteria are useless for our purposes... lol

 

[platt]

pretty readable & nice moves here. thx for the thread
ihearall go for it, its pretty easy reverting a wild carpophore to a veg state & even more if its for outdoor purposes. Once you are sure you grabbed an endemic specie, lets Sanitize a carboard piece----moist it----sanitize inner chunks of the fruiting body before facing its new substrate & force the veg state.

 

[iHearAll]

oh! that's what trichoderma is? lol
Ah the house mold you mean in this case is a different strain (longibrachiatum - ooo the longarmed one haha) than those being talked about in the soil (harzianum, koningii) though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoderma)

I'm very much on the fence about that characteristic of trichoderma, to inhibit the initial germination of other mycorrhizza. Personally, I took away from that discussion that the mycos and trichos actually limit each other so there'S balance I don't need to worry about.
BTW the wikipedia article links to a study (http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v2/n1/full/nrmicro797.html), whose abstract alone makes it sound like all in all trichoderma are beneficial, especially in preventing fungal diseases in plants?

Thinking on it, maybe it's a question of just having the right substrate. I mean, we want those fungi in there to process the more woody side of things (or was that just a conclusion I jumped to?) - plus I've never seen that household mold on woddy stuff.
So starting a culture on grains will not necessarily produce the herd we are looking for - as in this Longarmed One instead of the others who actually are mycorrhizally active in beneficial ways? Just a thought.
So I tend to stick to that mini-woodchip pile. Maybe mix in some known fungal food... oats? Wait a sec, thats a grain too haha
Ok I'm confused lol

Anyway, your shiitake idea reminded me that my mycos mix has all sorts of stuff in it:
View attachment 3794204
Never mind the Ectomycorrhizae, but the other fungi they have in there, even if in small amounts, maybe getting those to germinate & grow would make a good basis for adding further locally sourced species? Hm!

**edit** er, maybe I should wait till after my 1st coffee when trying to think these things through haha
I just reread the ingredients, theres only endos in there, why did I think there were further ones?! Of course, we can have all those as spores in the innoculant, but that's not what we're looking to make, a living culture of diverse fungi that will take up nutrient cycling running on the woody end of the food source spectrum.
And the extra bacteria are useless for our purposes... lol

yea trich is probably only an annoyance in mushroom cultivation. but yea it's definitely competative for oxygen and substrate (at least from what iv observed). i havent read the links yet btw but im about to read with MY morning coffee lol

pretty readable & nice moves here. thx for the thread
ihearall go for it, its pretty easy reverting a wild carpophore to a veg state & even more if its for outdoor purposes. Once you are sure you grabbed an endemic specie, lets Sanitize a carboard piece----moist it----sanitize inner chunks of the fruiting body before facing its new substrate & force the veg state.

sanitize the flesh of the fruiting body?!?? with heat? are the spores that hardy?

 

[platt]

yeah, cleaning it slightly with all the limitations an 1:10 dilution into water of household 3% peroxide provides. It should be enough even unnecessary, also you can just rinse with tap water the whole fresh shroom and put it in the substrate/cardboard. The carboard is wiped with isopropilic alcohol, evaporated, then moisted. You encapsulate this in a very little volume ghetto chamber wich makes sense like a zip bag and thats all. They like a little increment in co2 to revert to the veg status then you just close the zip bag and perforate some holes. This way the mycellium will effuse from itself wich is plain beautiful.
Consider Also throwing a bunch of non toxic shrooms to the compost pile i'd do it right now^
For better comprehension download how to grow mushrooms from Paul Stamets. Its a nice introduction to this things!

 

[calliandra]

yeah, cleaning it slightly with all the limitations an 1:10 dilution into water of household 3% peroxide provides. It should be enough even unnecessary, also you can just rinse with tap water the whole fresh shroom and put it in the substrate/cardboard. The carboard is wiped with isopropilic alcohol, evaporated, then moisted. You encapsulate this in a very little volume ghetto chamber wich makes sense like a zip bag and thats all. They like a little increment in co2 to revert to the veg status then you just close the zip bag and perforate some holes. This way the mycellium will effuse from itself wich is plain beautiful.
Consider Also throwing a bunch of non toxic shrooms to the compost pile i'd do it right now^
For better comprehension download how to grow mushrooms from Paul Stamets. Its a nice introduction to this things!

Hm, that sounds easy enough, thanks!!
So we can basically do this with any mushrooms we find in the woods - what I didn't quite get, you only put the lammellas (for example) onto the cardboard or chop up the whole mushroom?
And, does it take long?
Cheers!

oh and thanks for the reference, I found this:
https://decroissons.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/paul-stamets-mycelium-running-how-mushrooms-can-help-save-the-world.pdf

 

[iHearAll]

yeah, cleaning it slightly with all the limitations an 1:10 dilution into water of household 3% peroxide provides. It should be enough even unnecessary, also you can just rinse with tap water the whole fresh shroom and put it in the substrate/cardboard. The carboard is wiped with isopropilic alcohol, evaporated, then moisted. You encapsulate this in a very little volume ghetto chamber wich makes sense like a zip bag and thats all. They like a little increment in co2 to revert to the veg status then you just close the zip bag and perforate some holes. This way the mycellium will effuse from itself wich is plain beautiful.
Consider Also throwing a bunch of non toxic shrooms to the compost pile i'd do it right now^
For better comprehension download how to grow mushrooms from Paul Stamets. Its a nice introduction to this things!

yea my whole inspiration for wanting to do this was when i noticed the mycellium coursing through a large pile of mulch i put in the woods. i then tried using unfruited pan cyan cakes in my aerobic compost. they seemed to hate the thermophillic reaction and quickly receded into the ground or died. paul stamets was working on a fungal "pesticide" a few years ago. the zombie fungus "Ophiocordyceps unilateralis". i could have sworn him claiming this particular fungus was found while isolating a certain stage of growth in the purple orange mushroom i mentioned before.
i wonder what ever happened with this technology.... any ideas?

 

[calliandra]

Soooo I went to make some compost....

But this

plus this

does not equal 1m³ pile
That's the minimum I'd need as night temperatures are getting closer to freezing here.

The chipper I borrowed is too weak / apparently has some defect, and as I discovered in dismay doesn't "do" anything that isn't bone dry. So pretty much all the greens LOL

Ah fate!
But then again, I was doubting whether to even put a pile together right now - because of the fungi.
All of the materials are from my garden or the surroundings, and all of the soil here is fungally weak.
So if I want a fungally strong compost, and I do, there's still some inoculation to do!

So now I have a pretty little woodchip pile 30cm high and 90 in diameter.
It's made of all the chipped dry garden waste plus some dry leaves and stalks from last year.




I've left it dry for now, thinking to mix more freshly fallen leaves in so at least I have a batch and a bit for a round of thermal compost in the springtime/next summer.
I think I've got a good spot for it, there's a slow compost going on right behind it, and I want to train that rose to make more of a shading roof over it (the boxwood on the left is southeast so provides shade until after midday).


It's going to rain soon too, I think I'll leave it for now to see how hydrophobic this very dry material really is.
Mix it up in a week or so, with some freshly fallen leaves perhaps adding some mycos in.
And then use a small bucketful of that indoors, in my wormbin for one, and to create a nice innoculum that's ready to go for my closet garden (similar temperatures promote growth of those guys who will do well there?).
Thoughts?
Ideas?
Emergency brakes?

Oh, and what C:N ratio would you give these black currant branches?

Cheers!

 

[DonBrennon]

Great start, but I don't think you'd NEED to inoculate that pile with anything, spores travel for miles and are everywhere, they just need a good environment to thrive in and that pile is ideal. I'd guess you're gonna need a lot of greens to break that down, are you planning on leaving it till after winter now? If so, I'd just keep stacking that pile up with falling leaves and let em break down until you can get enough nitrogen input to really break it down.

@greasemonkeymann is the guy to help you out here though, he should start a composting consultancy, lol

 

[platt]

fungal "pesticide" a few years ago. the zombie fungus "Ophiocordyceps unilateralis". i could have sworn him claiming this particular fungus was found while isolating a certain stage of growth in the purple orange mushroom i mentioned before.

hahah^check for stamets 7 health supplement, (it has the cordyceps, well known in chinese health care) he jumped into that scene as many other smart raccoons of the psilocybin scene jumped into the the growing of exotic species & into the design or methodological implementation of big grow facilities.

calliandra thx for that link, didnt recall dat book name exactly cos all this work was done like 13 years ago^ anyway his top 3 publications are -the mushroom cultivator- related to sterile techniques & a nice compostage chapter, this is the one i was meaning. Then in -growing gourmet & medicinal mushrooms- u'll find pretty profitable & useful info and in -how mushrooms can save the world- in page 19 u ĺl find awesome info for shrooms foraging and the inherent moves & sequences related to secondary decomposers.
Also Calliandra i cant bring much help with all that wood. A slight overview tells me someone is about reverting the muthafucka awesomeness of the sun & that could take some time as DonBrennon said.

 

[calliandra]

Great start, but I don't think you'd NEED to inoculate that pile with anything, spores travel for miles and are everywhere, they just need a good environment to thrive in and that pile is ideal. I'd guess you're gonna need a lot of greens to break that down, are you planning on leaving it till after winter now? If so, I'd just keep stacking that pile up with falling leaves and let em break down until you can get enough nitrogen input to really break it down.

@greasemonkeymann is the guy to help you out here though, he should start a composting consultancy, lol

Quite so, I've been thinking of @greasemonkeymann alot these days myself (especially when raking leaves lol), but he must be getting swamped with questions, so I've been trying to keep my big girl pants on haha

Thinking on it, possibly what you said about a good environment to thrive in is the key difference to what I've been able to observe with surface compost - which I finally understand is more of a maintenance method for soils that are already great, not so much for build-up purposes. Especially when it comes to fungal recolonization.
So yeah, maybe there are more (useful! - we have enough fungus pests haha) spores around than I have come to believe, and I just wasn't giving them ideal conditions to multiply in...

I definitely am leaving the pile to sit over winter and will keep adding leaves (mainly tilia at the moment, some maple, lilac & buddleja will follow), extra innoculants or no.
I've also stashed the stalkier greens in a pile (the others got mulched), maybe a hedgehog will take a liking to it for winter sleep So in spring I'll already have a base stock of greens to start with.
Cheers!

 

[calliandra]

Thanks for clarifying, Platt - I saw there's a part on compost in the one I linked too, should give me ample food for thought!

Also Calliandra i cant bring much help with all that wood. A slight overview tells me someone is about reverting the muthafucka awesomeness of the sun & that could take some time as DonBrennon said.

Um, lol Sorry I don't get what you're talking about?

 

[platt]

zzZapped again by google translator?
beertheraphy is the answer^

 

[calliandra]

zzZapped again by google translator?
beertheraphy is the answer^

LMAO good to know, what language are you translating?