Mushrooms and other natural yard maintnance
I made an attempt at creating more than one pound of Oyster mushrooms. I have 1# of sterile media that I have Oyster mushrooms growing in and I inoculated about 10#s of yard waste with half of it. In laymans terms...
I mowed the lawn.
I used some of the grass clippings and "planted" edible mushrooms in them.
I am now hoping this will produce copious amounts of mushrooms, I documented all of the steps with a digital camera and I will post a web page if this is a success. If so, this is the first step in fast-composting of yard materials.
Mushrooms eat the fiberous content (cellulose) in plants and as such are primary decomposers. After mushrooms and other fungus, bacteria make short work of what is left. If this works then I can reduce the 1/4 ton of compost that we generally have working to a smaller amount and have food from it as well.
On another myco-note. Our systematic avaoidance of broad spectrum poisons has resulted in a rather healthy myco-diversity. After the first rainy season, we had around 5 distinct species of mushroom in the yard, now we are starting the next rainy season and I have found at least 4 more. I hope that the species count is over 15 by the end of the year.
This is very important to out yard as we have 14 trees (some quite large) and they produce prodigious amounts of leaves. These pile up in some areas and create tall spots in the yard that interfere with what I would call "positive draining" (i.e. NOT flood the house in heavy rains). If we can reduce the overall depth of leaves faster, then we can suffer problematic rains with less effort in the yard. I hate yard work.
Also, in an attempt to kill the hundreds of oak trees that are sprouting in the yard, I opted NOT to use Roundup and just got some vis-queen (plastic sheeting). I got the black stuff and completely covered the section of the yard (no grass there) that was the worst in Oak Sprouts. I will leave this for about a week and then pull it up. All of the lil' bastards will then be deseased. Then I move the plastic to another afflicted and grassless area for further extermination. This process will additionally assist my mushrooms by trapping moisture and preventing excessive airflow.
-Kevin