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Delay
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Polyculture benefits?
#19222928 - 12/03/13 03:57 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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Hi There,
I intend to grow a few species of mushrooms this year, including king stropharia, king oyster, pearl oyster, and shaggy manes. Pauls Stamets mentions the benefit of polucultures as having a longer more continuous yield throughout the season due to staggered fruiting times. Asides for this benefit, is there any other pro/con to having such a polyculture; If you are not considering the extra worked involved with numerous beds, would it be more/less beneficial to have separate beds or mixed beds?
Thanks,
Delay.
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liamtheloser
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223135 - 12/03/13 04:58 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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I'd say less beneficial. With mixed beds, won't one species eventually dominate the others?
I am doing separate beds for my king stropharia and King oyster. I am putting the stropharia under my veggies in the front yard, and King oyster under the cherry trees in the front yard.
I am doing woodchip beds spawned with sawdust spawn.
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wildernessjunkie
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223178 - 12/03/13 05:08 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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I think that if you are trying to produce a fungus crop in an outdoor setting, then your results will be poor overall, and hit or miss at best. For best results you really need to have SOME control over your colonization/fruiting environment.
I saw your other post and you mentioned that you are in Ontario, Canada. Im sure that there are some species that will do somewhat what you want. Though I dont think you will get the results you hope or envision.
With that said, farm residue/waste can be excellent substrate. And further, "mushroom compost" is considered by most gardeners and horticulturists to be some of the finest soil obtainable.
Perhaps you can arrange for a separate facility to grow marketable mushrooms. All using farm byproducts as a substrate, and then use the resulting spent substrates to sow back into the farm soil.
You should check out the posts made by Sparkle. She has got some amazing things going on, that I think you could appreciate.
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Delay
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Quote:
wildernessjunkie said: I think that if you are trying to produce a fungus crop in an outdoor setting, then your results will be poor overall, and hit or miss at best. For best results you really need to have SOME control over your colonization/fruiting environment.
I saw your other post and you mentioned that you are in Ontario, Canada. Im sure that there are some species that will do somewhat what you want. Though I dont think you will get the results you hope or envision.
With that said, farm residue/waste can be excellent substrate. And further, "mushroom compost" is considered by most gardeners and horticulturists to be some of the finest soil obtainable.
Perhaps you can arrange for a separate facility to grow marketable mushrooms. All using farm byproducts as a substrate, and then use the resulting spent substrates to sow back into the farm soil.
You should check out the posts made by Sparkle. She has got some amazing things going on, that I think you could appreciate.
Yes I've been debating what you're suggesting because it also permits pasteurization. I'm experimenting with both approaches this upcoming season. I'm focusing primarily on King Stropharia, and perhaps Elm Oyster as well.
I don't intend to do polyculture regardless, because I'm trying to determine what mushroom-species to plant-species relationships are best. I was merely curious.
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wildernessjunkie
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223206 - 12/03/13 05:16 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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Dont take me wrong. I dont have anything against polyculture. I think it has lots of value and potential. But for starting out, I think a tried and true culture is a better place to start.
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Delay
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I'm not planning on doing polyculture, I'm planning on intercropping monoculture fungi with plants. I'm still curious about polyculture though.
It's a question of symantics...because intercropping a given species of plants with a given species of fungi is techincally polyculture. What I'm not doing is growing more than one given species of fungi in a given bed, which is what the question relates to.
Edited by Delay (12/03/13 05:21 PM)
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drake89
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223294 - 12/03/13 05:42 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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who knows? you're in uncharted territory. you got enough beds to run an experiment?
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leschampignons
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Quote:
wildernessjunkie said: I think that if you are trying to produce a fungus crop in an outdoor setting, then your results will be poor overall, and hit or miss at best.
I gotta disagree with you there, check out this video: all he did was buy two bags of spawn and bury em in some woodchips and water the patch... Many other users have posted photos of oysters springing up out of the ground after they buried blocks, and log growing is also certainly a viable method.
Much easier than an indoor crop IMO. The problem, as mentioned, is a relatively short season of fruiting, which can be mitigated somewhat by using more than one species and/or a greenhouse/coldframe
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Delay
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: drake89]
#19223366 - 12/03/13 05:59 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
drake89 said: who knows? you're in uncharted territory. you got enough beds to run an experiment?
I'm partnering with a friend who has thousand of hectares of land being used for cash crop, of which he is cool with using as much as we want to for this experiment. Practically speaking, I have unlimited wheat straw as substrate and unlimited land.
I believe you are mistaken regarding yields. "Forest farming of wine-cap Stropharia mushrooms(J. N. Bruhn, N. Abright and J. D. Mihail)" shows yields between 16-33kg per cubic meter using straw as a medium, at a depth of ~30cm. That equates to 5.33-11kg/square meter, assuming I use beds of ~30cm in depth. Furthermore, yields could be increased by a factor of 2.2 with the incorportation of Lolium perenne grass chaff into straw substrates.
Edited by Delay (12/03/13 06:10 PM)
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wildernessjunkie
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Thats a good video. I enjoyed watching it.
Keep in mind though, that what he presented was a small scale success. The way I understand the OP's intent though is to do it on a very large scale.
Further King Stroph usually grows on beds of wood chips, as it was depicted in that video. I have a hard time thinking that delivering a foot or two deep of wood chips would be feasible on any farm of any size.
That particular species will also require a lot of water. And Im not familiar enough with the climate in Delay's area to make a guess as to whether it would work out.
What kind of crops will be grown on your target farm Delay?
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Delay
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Quote:
wildernessjunkie said: Thats a good video. I enjoyed watching it.
Keep in mind though, that what he presented was a small scale success. The way I understand the OP's intent though is to do it on a very large scale.
Further King Stroph usually grows on beds of wood chips, as it was depicted in that video. I have a hard time thinking that delivering a foot or two deep of wood chips would be feasible on any farm of any size.
That particular species will also require a lot of water. And Im not familiar enough with the climate in Delay's area to make a guess as to whether it would work out.
What kind of crops will be grown on your target farm Delay?
King Oyster will be grown more in the context outside of intercropping with plants. Stropharia will be intercropped. I will experiment with intercropping with horticultural crops (brassicacae plants, tomatoes, squash, etc....it will be a massive garden), as well as with corn and wheat.
Water is not an issue.
I do plan on going large small-scale if you will...I'm thinking ~2000-5000 pounds of lime-water/7-day-water pasteurized straw inoculated with King Stropharia if I can make sufficient spawn. I'm hoping to have ~250lbs of sterile spawn, which I'll spawn twice at a ratio of ~20% to pasteurized straw. I'm hoping to get the first round of spawning done indoors but we'll see how long it takes.
This was about polyculture damnit!
Edited by Delay (12/03/13 06:19 PM)
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wildernessjunkie
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223456 - 12/03/13 06:18 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
This was about polyculture damnit! 

See how we get distracted?
If the farm is small, and water is not an issue, then I think your options broaden. The bigger you get, I think your options narrow.
Are we talking a small hobby farm? Or are we talking 200+ acres of grain?
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Delay
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Quote:
wildernessjunkie said:
Quote:
This was about polyculture damnit! 

See how we get distracted?
If the farm is small, and water is not an issue, then I think your options broaden. The bigger you get, I think your options narrow.
Are we talking a small hobby farm? Or are we talking 200+ acres of grain?
several thousand hectares of cash crop. the size of the farm doesn't matter, other than the fact that land and straw are not limited. Better yet, I can get perennial ryegrass chaff for free.
Edited by Delay (12/03/13 06:23 PM)
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Delay
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19223535 - 12/03/13 06:32 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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so as far as polyculture goes, I'd like to know if biological efficiency is increased, or if there are any other benefits?
I would suspect that it might be, provided the polycultured species had diverse nutritional requirements, resulting in more of the substrate being digestible by the cultivated species? I simply haven't stumbled upon any research on the matter...I was hoping somebody would have some input.
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drake89
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Re: Polyculture benefits? [Re: Delay]
#19224251 - 12/03/13 08:53 PM (10 years, 2 months ago) |
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sounds like you need to look into spawn production, particularly bunker spawn as discussed in 'mycelium running'
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