Anyone using mushroom compost in your soil mix?

Since I always get asked, "what is mushroom mulch?", I will go ahead and put this here:

The precise composition of mushroom compost varies from source to source, but in general it is composed of a customized mixture that includes hay, straw, spent brewer's grain, peat moss, chicken manure, corncobs, potash, gypsum, cottonseed meal, soybean meal, lime and ammonium nitrate. Before being used as a growing medium for mushrooms, piles sit for up to a month to "cook," or undergo a chemical process that results in finished compost.

I pay $20 for a little less than a cubic yard of the compost, and I'm all about being frugal. You need to let it "cool" down for a few months before using. That is the main reason I'm working on my soil mix in December. I had a couple of hours this morning before work, so I mixed up a hot batch of my Darro Dirt. I will try 5 gallons of the hot mix in the bottom and sides of my holes, and 5 gallons of the milder mix in the center.

Here is the ratio I used today.

20 gal mushroom compost
5 gal peat moss
1 1/2 gal Black Kow compost
4 cups lime
4 cups coffee grounds
2 cups bone meal
1 1/2 cups blood meal
1 cup Epson salts
1 cup worm castings
I am out of lava rock, but I use 5 gallons of washed rock in the mix. This makes enough for 6 holes.

I ran tomatoes and peppers in my milder Darro Dirt this summer to work the kinks out of the mix. My first batch had end bloom rot problems, so I added more Epson salts. The mix is about the same as the above, but with 3 buckets of mushroom compost, 2 of peat moss, 2 of a good potting soil and 1 of Black Kow.

If you guys have used mushroom mulch, any info you have would be greatly appreciated.

Larro

Larro Darro said:

Since I always get asked, "what is mushroom mulch?", I will go ahead and put this here:

The precise composition of mushroom compost varies from source to source, but in general it is composed of a customized mixture that includes hay, straw, spent brewer's grain, peat moss, chicken manure, corncobs, potash, gypsum, cottonseed meal, soybean meal, lime and ammonium nitrate. Before being used as a growing medium for mushrooms, piles sit for up to a month to "cook," or undergo a chemical process that results in finished compost.

I pay $20 for a little less than a cubic yard of the compost, and I'm all about being frugal. You need to let it "cool" down for a few months before using. That is the main reason I'm working on my soil mix in December. I had a couple of hours this morning before work, so I mixed up a hot batch of my Darro Dirt. I will try 5 gallons of the hot mix in the bottom and sides of my holes, and 5 gallons of the milder mix in the center.

Here is the ratio I used today.

20 gal mushroom compost
5 gal peat moss
1 1/2 gal Black Kow compost
4 cups lime
4 cups coffee grounds
2 cups bone meal
1 1/2 cups blood meal
1 cup Epson salts
1 cup worm castings
I am out of lava rock, but I use 5 gallons of washed rock in the mix. This makes enough for 6 holes.

I ran tomatoes and peppers in my milder Darro Dirt this summer to work the kinks out of the mix. My first batch had end bloom rot problems, so I added more Epson salts. The mix is about the same as the above, but with 3 buckets of mushroom compost, 2 of peat moss, 2 of a good potting soil and 1 of Black Kow.

If you guys have used mushroom mulch, any info you have would be greatly appreciated.

Larro

Click to expand...

I saw this for sale at the local ace hardware they only wanted a few dollars for a large bag, let me know how it works out I might pick up some next season.

I will let you know how it does.

I ran some pepper plants under the lights in 32 oz yogurt containers {in the milder mix} to see how long the soil would last with the small pot size. It did run short, but the plants had got huge and produced a lot of pepper by then. Even using the hotter mix, I'm thinking about adding half a cup of the coated time release plant food per bucket. Because of location, I won't be able to go to the Primate Patch that often. So I want it to last as long as possible.

I made it to town for supplies, so I re-mixed the Darro Dirt. To every 5 gallon bucket of soil, I added 1 cup each of time release plant food, 13-13-13 bulk fertilizer and vermiculite and half a cup of perlite to the hot mix, and all that but the triple 13 to the mild mix.

We had a nice rainy couple of days, so I got some holes dug. The first two holes I put 2 1/2 gallons of the hot and 5 gallons of the mild. The third hole got 1 bucket of each. I will do some holes with 3 buckets of soil, but that is a lot of walking with a heavy load. Later on, when the first rush of deer season is over, I can drive to pretty close to where a lot of it is going.

You can see by my avatar how sandy the soil around here is.

I use mushroom compost, but in much smaller ratios. My soil is about 15%-20% Mushroom compost vs. yours which looks like 70%-75% MC. MC has "some" nutritional values, I mostly use it to "boost" my micro beastie herd in the soil. The MC I get smells like methane gas, very active. You need to mix in some forest humus into your mix, and much more earthworm castings (cup and a half is very little for 30+ gallons of soil) for better results. Here's my soil recipe, hope this helps.
TMB

https://www.rollitup.org/t/tmbs-secret-monster-plant-soil-recipe.861191/

treemansbuds said:

I use mushroom compost, but in much smaller ratios. My soil is about 15%-20% Mushroom compost vs. yours which looks like 70%-75% MC. MC has "some" nutritional values, I mostly use it to "boost" my micro beastie herd in the soil. The MC I get smells like methane gas, very active. You need to mix in some forest humus into your mix, and much more earthworm castings (cup and a half is very little for 30+ gallons of soil) for better results. Here's my soil recipe, hope this helps.
TMB

https://www.rollitup.org/t/tmbs-secret-monster-plant-soil-recipe.861191/

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. That mix looks great, but I'm trying to do this on the cheap. For my first 20 years of growing all I bought was 13-13-13 at planting time, some blue juice during the summer and fish emulsion for flowering. I know I will have to break down and spend some money, like buying bulk worm castings. Some of the other things I can't find locally. Not crazy about buying on-line, but will have to for certain items.

I looked at a post from my Tractorbynet garden thread to see exactly what I had put in my earlier mix. Here is what I used on the tomatoes and peppers in grow bags in Walmart kiddie pools. {I dis-remembered the amounts of peat moss it looks like}

In round numbers it is 4 five gallons buckets of peat moss, 3 buckets of mushroom mulch, 2 of lava rocks, 2 of Black Magic {Big Lot's brand} potting soil, 1 of Scott's potting soil, 1 bucket of cow manure, 1 cup of bone meal, 1 cup of blood meal, 1 cup of lime, 2 cups of worm castings and 2 cups of coffee grounds.

That works out to about 23% MC, closer to your soil mix. The first run of Pruden's Purple tomatoes had some end bloom rot problems and I realized I had forgotten Epsom salts. I mixed up another batch just about the same {only change was half as many lava rocks} with the Epson salts and run more peppers inside under the lights in small pots to see how long the soil would hold up. They made one crop of peppers but gave out soon after the fruit was ripe. That got me thinking I needed the mix a little hotter. That and the fact the MC is so cheap. The other day when I mixed this last batch I went really heavy on MC because I was out of my good potting soil, and down to a piece of bag of peat moss. I have potting soil now, and will be picking up more lava rocks and peat moss when I go town. I will do a few different mixes and see which I like the most. I use my garden thread on TBN as a journal to remember the where, what and when. I guess I'll start a grow thread so I can remember what mix I put to what holes.

Some of my Primate Patches are a good long walk away from the closest road, so I want to be able to use less of my mix. I always try to made my holes 15 gallons {the size of a #2 washtub}, but I will mix more dirt in the further I have to go away from the truck.