Combining funga and flora and making fungus food

in Fungi Lovers5 days ago (edited)

Have you ever dug down into soil and found white strands of fungus like material? That is mycelium, and it grows throughout the forests of the world. Plants use this "network" to exchange nutrients and signaling for predators affecting near by plants. It really should be considered the worlds first local area network (LAN)... way before ethernet cables lol... sorry computer joke.

Many kinds of fungus will focus on certain ways of getting nutrients, such wood loving fungi growing on dead wood logs or trees. But there is a certain kind that can greatly benefit live plants.

There is a certain type of mycelium known as mycorrhizal fungus. It requires plants to survive, and the host plant can greatly benefit from the relationship the fungus with the flora. This kind of fungus will grow over the roots of the plants and encapsulate them. Similar to how myelin sheaths are formed over neurons in the brain. This membrane greatly enhances many plant roots.

Products sold contain powders of these types of fungus and bacteria. Such as this one called Great White. It has many kinds of the beneficial bacteria and fungus inside. You can see all the strains on the bottle.

One of my pine seeds sprouted, so it was the perfect time to inoculate it with the powder.

Putting a quarter teaspoon or so of powder on a plate I rolled the seed carefully in the powder.

With it looking like a fungal sugar cookie its time to go in the dirt. I sprinkle a little bit of the powder in the planting hole too.

Seed is now in the tray, and given a little water. A week from now I will give it a feeding, specifically for the fungus living in the soil I added.

Fungus food:

I have some cannabis seeds that are a few weeks old now, and they also have been inoculated with the Great White powder. Every seven days I need to feed the fungus growing around the roots. And once a week I also feed my normal plant fertilizers for the seedlings.

My fungus food recipe:

1 gallon of water
1 teaspoon of humic/fulvic acid
1 tablespoon of kelp meal
1 tablespoon of fish oil
1 tablespoon of blackstrap molasses

My basic fish oil... I hear hydrolyzed is better, when I run out I will get the "good stuff".

The next two ingredients are dry and mix into the water well.

The kelp should also be good for the plants, probably most of this is good for both.

I used all of this because its the same stuff sold as "Myco chum" which is sold to feed this kind of fungi.

And lastly molasses, the fungi need sugar. And once the host plant is established it will give sugars to the fungus naturally. In exchange the fungus will give its own captured phosphorus, nitrogen, zinc, iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, and sulfur that it gathers through its own mycelial network to host plants. While also improving water absorption capabilities by the encapsulation of the roots by the fungus.

It all sounds so alien...

Adding a tablespoon of the sugar will help out both the plant and the fungus. I used to add molasses to my flowering cannabis plants.

Filling up the jug with warm water it helps to get it all mixed up good.

We can see the fungus food inside. Waiting for it to cool before pouring it around the roots of the seedlings.

I will wait for more seedlings to sprout, and as soon as they do I will roll them in the powder and add them to the experiment. It takes around a month for the mycelium to establish itself, and then once it goes through host identification it will bond with the host plant and the teamwork between funga and flora will begin.

Special thanks to @feanorgu for mentioning mycorrhizal fungus, after researching it I agreed with him it could greatly help my seedlings. So I am giving it a try now.

Sort:  

Like I said on Discord:

I think if you bring in the right material, it will already be inocculated with everything.
If you bring in dead organic stuff, you can bet that all sorts of spores and whatnot are already present on the surfaces.

Mycorrhizal fungi are around forever. Since the first plants grew on land.
Some say, these fungi made it to land even before plants and allowed plants to conquer land.
Anyways, they are omnipresent; spores last forever, the fungi blasted spores into this world for many millions of years.

These spores and all other 'micro' life is already present in any soil that you recover from the big outside
For a mycellium to form (or any other 'soil food web') it takes the right nutrients.
And like I said in the beginning: Whatever the material you bring in, the stuff that wants to eat away at it, is already present on the piece, just waiting for the right conditions to multiply.

Or the other way round: If you don't find the mycellium around your plant that you wish for, you should focus on bringing in the material it feeds on.

I went down the mushroom rabbit hole deep.
I did a lot of stuff with grain. I went through a complicated process of steam-sterilizing the grain and whatnot, worked super clean. Even then: If I wasn't careful, something else would colonize the grain. Whether some spores or germs or whatever survived 20 minute high pressure cooking or the bleaching of the utensils or whatever....
I came to the conclusion, that fungi and their spores are literally on everything.

So the job isn't really to bring in fungi, but to create the right conditions for them. And if you don't have fungi, then there was nothing for them to feed on in the first place, or they got outraced by something else that got to the nutrients first, and then that's ok, too.

Bottomline is: you want something to break down material to provide nutrients for your plants. I wouldn't worry if that isn't necessarily fungi or more specifically mycorizzae. Because the material you used as substrate didn't need fungi is why they aren't present. And actually they are present, they just did not go to work. Or they did a week earlier, before you looked and now something else is active...

I should have written a post...

Yes I remember our conversation. I mentioned that the dirt I buy is store bought, in the past I bought Miracle grow. But learned it had anti fungals added to it so I no longer use that brand. The new stuff I got was full of fungus gnats, so I can assume they did not apply anything to this new stuff to stop fungus from growing.

That being said, what grows naturally is probably not the same strains as what is sold in these products like "Great White" yes you will surely get some naturally. But I think some of these in the product are cultivated and needs to be added otherwise it would be lacking that kind of fungus.

No idea if naturally any of the fungus found in the potting soil is mycorrhizal in nature. It may just be the kind I mentioned in the beginning of this post, just growing throughout the soil itself and not bonding with the roots.

Anyways yes you are correct, in garden soil not treated with fungicides you will probably kind many beneficial bacteria and fungus. But using a product like great white probably has stuff that are not going to be found naturally.

Yes you should have..lol

It works great building roots in cannabis.. I like to add a spoonful to the hole before I add a plant.

Oh cool, thats great you have used it. Looking forward to seeing if it helps a lot.

Yes it's great for transplanting

Nice, I just planted some peach, pear and plum trees. Sprinkled a tea spoon of the powder on the root balls and a tea spoon into the holes.

You know about worm castings for the fruit trees.. 🔥 🔥

It shows that agriculture is in your blood.. salute 🫡 🫡🫡 for you..

Loading...

A very good experience to use as an example.

Thank you for this useful post👍

glad you liked the post

Loading...
Loading...

Curious about HivePakistan? Join us on Discord!

Delegate your HP to the Hivepakistan account and earn 90% of curation rewards in liquid hive!

50 HP
100 HP
200 HP
500 HP (Supporter Badge)
1000 HP

Follow our Curation Trail and don't miss voting!

Additional Perks: Delegate To @ pakx For Earning $PAKX Investment Token


Curated by gwajnberg

Microrrizal are wonderful! It is an amazing synchronized thing that always amazed me in nature! When i was a teacher I loved to teach about it to my students

Sure is amazing, glad I found out about this interesting fungi.

I still remember the cardboard box of mushrooms we used to get as a kid. We would put them in the shoe closet by our front door and wait for them to grow!

Oh cool, they can grow really fast so it is fun to watch them.

Well-done sir

Discord Server.This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our

Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.

Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.

image.png

100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.

Loading...

This is good, now you need to get one that will make mushrooms later, try to translate this and see what i really meant, https://boletosdeorum.pt/produto/inoculo-micorrizico-esporal-de-lactarius-deliciosus-em-po/ this one will actually make mushrooms on a later stage in life.

Ah right, there are some that produce fruits as well. I am not sure if I can buy that in the US. I looked for lactarius deliciosus spores but could not find any for sale in the United States.

YE i understand, i think that species is for Stone pine and others like that, i am not sure how to ship that to the usa i dont know how your customs law work, but if you would get that, in 10 years or so you would have a super gourmet product!

Oh cool well I do have some stone pines I am starting. Maybe I will email that store and see if they can find a way to ship to me.

ye do that bro, i only know a couple stores and both happen to be in Portugal probably a pain to send to the USA but if you dont try you never know, those are the shit!

Loading...

Have you ever heard of plastic eating fungi? It's mycelium are also useful to build new materials. You're post really did a great help for me to understand the other benefits of mycelium

Yes I have, pretty amazing we can do such a thing with fungi. Also heard about using fungi to get rid of radioactive waste.

that would be really cool.

Oh nice, glad my post helped you understand fungi a little better.

Loading...

This is a great reference, maybe I should try this one. Thank you for sharing.

Ah glad to show off what I am doing

I have much to learn from you.

One day.... One day... But today I study.

Ah glad you learned something from my post.

There are always new ideas about agriculture in you, I salute the way you do some good ideas in every post about agriculture, I am a farmer too but I am not as smart as you 😁😁

Very useful article my friend 😊

Thank you, well you can always try out some of these methods and maybe they will work on your farm too.

The knowledge you share is very useful for as many mushroom and plant lovers as to whether this mushroom you are referring to can be eaten

Ah glad you learned about these fungi, but they do not produces edible mushrooms as far as I know.


image.png

We support gardening, homesteading, cannabis growers, permaculture and other garden related content. Delegations to the curation account, @gardenhive, are welcome! Keep an eye out for our weekly writing prompts and our monthly #gardenjournal challenge on the 1st of each month.

I could take lessons in farming from you 😁
I learnt quite a lot from reading your post, you are a seasoned gardener.

This work well. I really love this idea

This is a good lesson to farmers. But fungi you are referring to, is it edible?

I love the way you prepare your own fertilizer, at least you know what goes into your plants.

Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...