Dandurn777 said:

It would be interesting to see how the shells work, but I don’t think they’d be optimal. They’re a lot harder, take longer to break down, and don’t have the same porous structure like woodchips have. I grow/process walnuts and the shells are pretty similar. People use the ground down shells for road base, and other things, but they take a long time to decompose. I can put down woodchips and in 1 or so years half of it breaks down to become compost. Walnut shells take much longer to decompose. Every fall squirrels push out their old nuts from the previous season and other than being dirty, the shells are completely in tact.

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I think I stand corrected. Some fresh walnut shells ended up getting thrown where I have some colonized chips. Within a couple weeks there was mycelium all over the shell. Might be a good source of mycelium food after all.

Rusty2096 said:

But I keep asking myself the same question when I read the posts in this thread : why

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Egon_Spengler said:

I too am very new to the woodlover’s club. I recently made some T1 transfers of my first Ps Cyanescens cultures, and earlier this very afternoon I inoculated my first azurescens and an unknown New Zealand woodlover.

Im uncertain of the long term viability of these particular cultures in outdoor beds here in coastal Texas, zone 9B. But Im giving them a shot, and hope to get a little a practice/learning in with them.

What I will be really looking forward to starting one day is some caerulescens. They are not native here, but have been observed in Texas a couple times, and being native to parts of Georgia with piney woods with sweet gum trees and clay soils, I feel like I would have a good chance of naturalizing a few outdoor patches on my property.

Like the others mentioned, it would be really nice to have a perennial source that occur naturally in the landscape. I’m outside working on my plants a lot anyway, so a little maintenance on some shaded beds would feel like just another addition to the garden…that’s the goal anyway.

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Coastal Texas will be a challenge, but after seeing some of the boys get summer WL's this year who knows... You'll have to find a way to keep them moist and cool during the summer or they'll die off. Container grows might work best, so you can take them inside during the heat of the Texas summers. For outdoor beds I'd suggest locating a print of the new warm-weather Indian WL species that Adas just shared a pic of.