Cultivation Quarters

Ken Litchfield

Let’s talk about the different lifestyles of mushrooms for cultivation purposes.
Just to review, these are:

• Saprobic – those mushrooms that live on dead stuff like raw cellulose in the dead heartwood of tree trunks, wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, straw, or cardboard or broken-down cellulose like duff, compost, or manure. Examples of the first would be oysters, crabalone, reishi, chicken and hen of the woods, garden giant, and stink horns, and the second would be shaggy parasol, shaggy mane, and button mushrooms.
• Mycorrhizal – those mushrooms that need a tree host symbiont for mutual nutritional benefit like the oak or the pine. Examples of the fruit of the oak would be chanterelles, candy caps, amethystinas, and death caps. Examples of the fruit of the pine would be porcinis, Santas, and slippery Jacks.
• Parasitic – those mushrooms that take their nutrition from a living host such as a plant, animal, or another fungus. Examples of these would be huitlacoche on maize, Cordyceps on caterpillars, and pine spikes on slippery jacks.
• Opportunistic – Those mushrooms that may have more than one form of nutritional sustenance in the same stage of its life cycle like the honey mushroom or the morel. This doesn’t include huitlacoche which is parasitic on maize in one stage of its life cycle and saprobic on soil humus in the other stage.

We have been discussing saprobic mushrooms mostly up to this point but this month we’ll focus on mycorrhizal mushrooms due to our special holiday season botanical gifts that happen to be perfect for mycorrhizal mushroom cultivation. Just after the end of the gift giving holiday when most everything surplus is on severe markdown to a more realistic price, you may find in the nursery section of hardware stores, drugstores, or big box chains those leftover holiday trees that are no longer in demand for display purposes. Primarily you’ll find Italian stone pine, a type of nut pine that can produce edible pignolias. You might also find other pine species or perhaps young Deodar cedars or other ornamental conifers that can act as the host for fruit of the root of the pine type mushrooms.

You can also often find wintergreen plants that have evergreen leaves, white flowers, and red berries, all of which have the wintergreen flavor in them. Wintergreen is a member of the Ericaceae, the blueberry family, which includes azaleas, rhododendrons, madrones, and manzanitas many of which have their own mycorrhizal mushrooms and which might adopt the wintergreen.

Whatever trees you might get at this time of year, on discount or intentionally buying special selections at a nursery or transplanting from elsewhere, you have two main options for growing them in your garden - in the ground and in containers.

Both ways you could inoculate them with the slurries of spores and mushroom flesh of the mycorrhizal mushrooms you want. If you plant them in the ground you can keep them relatively small and attractive by careful aesthetic pruning or by growing in containers like bonsai. Either way you can have your own pygmy forest that can produce mycorrhizal mushrooms. Whether in the ground or in a container you can plant several species of conifers and hardwoods together to simulate the conditions of a mixed forest. With more species of trees intertwining their roots there is a greater likelihood that the mushrooms that you inoculate the trees with can find a niche to adopt.

To simulate the forest duff conditions and enhance the likelihood of getting slurries of mushrooms to “take,” you should maintain a thick mulch of wood chips, leaves, pine needles, oak leaves, and other aesthetically uniform organic materials. With six inches to one foot of mulch the trees roots are more likely to grow up into the lower layers of decaying mulch. Periodically during the rainy season mushroom harvest you will have old mushrooms, and damaged parts of prime mushrooms that you want to have growing in your garden. These mushrooms and parts you put into a blender of water and blend briefly to grind up the flesh and make a spore and flesh slurry. Rake the mulch away from under the canopy of the trees to a depth that stirs up and gently damages the tree roots to better expose them to the fungal materials in the slurry. The slurry is sprinkled and sloshed around under the canopy of the trees and then watered into the mulchy soil. The raked mulch is then replaced and also watered to settle it into place.

The spores and mushroom flesh both could potentially find a root to interact with. The mushroom flesh is cloned from the mushroom genetics of the mycorrhizal mushrooms used in the slurry and could potentially jump directly to the roots.

The spores will be mixed new genetics each of which would sprout and grow into a haploid mycelium seeking another haploid mate. When they find each other and mate they will then grow into a new diploid mycelium that can interact with the roots of the tree host. While haploid they are likely saprobic on the dead organic matter in the mulch or parasitic on little organisms in the mulch. The new diploid mycelium that is produced from the haploid mating is likely parasitic on the haploid parents until it finds the mycorrhizal host tree root that it can interact with symbiotically.

The container plants are potentially easier to inoculate with slurries as the roots are captive within the container and often exposed where they meet the edges of the container especially if they get potbound. You only need to lift the root ball from the container dip it into the spore/flesh slurry to have germinating spores and flesh coming into contact with the exposed roots, and slip it back into the container.

Some folks recommend adding molasses to the slurry water and adding an aquarium air bubbler to aerate the slurry for several days so the spores and the mycelium germinate and grow for several days before inoculation. This is unlikely to do anything but add a bloom of yeasts and bacteria to the slurry. Holding and aerating the slurry for any length of time is only likely to produce a collection of organisms adapted to an aerated liquid culture and not to the duff under the trees. It would be better to pour the freshly made slurry directly into the ground at the exposed roots, rather than have an unnatural incubation period.


Cultivation Quarters Ken Litchfield Let’s talk about the different lifestyles of mushrooms for cultivation purposes. Just to review, these are: • Saprobic – those mushrooms that live on dead stuff like raw cellulose in the dead heartwood of tree trunks, wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, straw, or cardboard or broken-down cellulose like duff, compost, or manure. Examples of the first would be oysters, crabalone, reishi, chicken and hen of the woods, garden giant, and stink horns, and the second would be shaggy parasol, shaggy mane, and button mushrooms. • Mycorrhizal – those mushrooms that need a tree host symbiont for mutual nutritional benefit like the oak or the pine. Examples of the fruit of the oak would be chanterelles, candy caps, amethystinas, and death caps. Examples of the fruit of the pine would be porcinis, Santas, and slippery Jacks. • Parasitic – those mushrooms that take their nutrition from a living host such as a plant, animal, or another fungus. Examples of these would be huitlacoche on maize, Cordyceps on caterpillars, and pine spikes on slippery jacks. • Opportunistic – Those mushrooms that may have more than one form of nutritional sustenance in the same stage of its life cycle like the honey mushroom or the morel. This doesn’t include huitlacoche which is parasitic on maize in one stage of its life cycle and saprobic on soil humus in the other stage. We have been discussing saprobic mushrooms mostly up to this point but this month we’ll focus on mycorrhizal mushrooms due to our special holiday season botanical gifts that happen to be perfect for mycorrhizal mushroom cultivation. Just after the end of the gift giving holiday when most everything surplus is on severe markdown to a more realistic price, you may find in the nursery section of hardware stores, drugstores, or big box chains those leftover holiday trees that are no longer in demand for display purposes. Primarily you’ll find Italian stone pine, a type of nut pine that can produce edible pignolias. You might also find other pine species or perhaps young Deodar cedars or other ornamental conifers that can act as the host for fruit of the root of the pine type mushrooms. You can also often find wintergreen plants that have evergreen leaves, white flowers, and red berries, all of which have the wintergreen flavor in them. Wintergreen is a member of the Ericaceae, the blueberry family, which includes azaleas, rhododendrons, madrones, and manzanitas many of which have their own mycorrhizal mushrooms and which might adopt the wintergreen. Whatever trees you might get at this time of year, on discount or intentionally buying special selections at a nursery or transplanting from elsewhere, you have two main options for growing them in your garden - in the ground and in containers. Both ways you could inoculate them with the slurries of spores and mushroom flesh of the mycorrhizal mushrooms you want. If you plant them in the ground you can keep them relatively small and attractive by careful aesthetic pruning or by growing in containers like bonsai. Either way you can have your own pygmy forest that can produce mycorrhizal mushrooms. Whether in the ground or in a container you can plant several species of conifers and hardwoods together to simulate the conditions of a mixed forest. With more species of trees intertwining their roots there is a greater likelihood that the mushrooms that you inoculate the trees with can find a niche to adopt. To simulate the forest duff conditions and enhance the likelihood of getting slurries of mushrooms to “take,” you should maintain a thick mulch of wood chips, leaves, pine needles, oak leaves, and other aesthetically uniform organic materials. With six inches to one foot of mulch the trees roots are more likely to grow up into the lower layers of decaying mulch. Periodically during the rainy season mushroom harvest you will have old mushrooms, and damaged parts of prime mushrooms that you want to have growing in your garden. These mushrooms and parts you put into a blender of water and blend briefly to grind up the flesh and make a spore and flesh slurry. Rake the mulch away from under the canopy of the trees to a depth that stirs up and gently damages the tree roots to better expose them to the fungal materials in the slurry. The slurry is sprinkled and sloshed around under the canopy of the trees and then watered into the mulchy soil. The raked mulch is then replaced and also watered to settle it into place. The spores and mushroom flesh both could potentially find a root to interact with. The mushroom flesh is cloned from the mushroom genetics of the mycorrhizal mushrooms used in the slurry and could potentially jump directly to the roots. The spores will be mixed new genetics each of which would sprout and grow into a haploid mycelium seeking another haploid mate. When they find each other and mate they will then grow into a new diploid mycelium that can interact with the roots of the tree host. While haploid they are likely saprobic on the dead organic matter in the mulch or parasitic on little organisms in the mulch. The new diploid mycelium that is produced from the haploid mating is likely parasitic on the haploid parents until it finds the mycorrhizal host tree root that it can interact with symbiotically. The container plants are potentially easier to inoculate with slurries as the roots are captive within the container and often exposed where they meet the edges of the container especially if they get potbound. You only need to lift the root ball from the container dip it into the spore/flesh slurry to have germinating spores and flesh coming into contact with the exposed roots, and slip it back into the container. Some folks recommend adding molasses to the slurry water and adding an aquarium air bubbler to aerate the slurry for several days so the spores and the mycelium germinate and grow for several days before inoculation. This is unlikely to do anything but add a bloom of yeasts and bacteria to the slurry. Holding and aerating the slurry for any length of time is only likely to produce a collection of organisms adapted to an aerated liquid culture and not to the duff under the trees. It would be better to pour the freshly made slurry directly into the ground at the exposed roots, rather than have an unnatural incubation period.
Mycena News - Happy New Year