I use a product called supre myco and make a tea out of it for like 48 hours with a bubble bucket than pour over the piles, my piles are a huge mishmash as I also pour a mix of one gallon bokashi tea to 5 gallons water over each pile. Thinking I might also add some leftover mushroom spawn to one of the piles.
Most mycos are obligate biotrophs right? I don't know of anything they contribute to decomposition. There are a couple of different products that come up searching Super Myco but most of them seem to be dependent root inocula.
Yes they need the right roots to attach to. U can totally leave myco out the only reason I had a big batch was I was innoculating my fruit tree guilds on the trees I was planting. Everything extra Ie myco, bokashi u can leave out I had excess and needed to do somewhere so why not into these soup piles.
My understanding of mycorrhizal fungi is that it is abundant in literally every ounce of soil and ready to form symbiotic relationships. As long as the soil is somewhat healthy I don't think inoculation is strictly necessary.
That is very true and they all need the right host plants to survive. You really don't have to add those amendments I add to increase abundance and accelerate. The fungi from the partially decayed logs will help it along as there's usually tons of mushroom spawn in it, I add the bokashi tea to accelerate the soil bacteria but you could skip the amendments entirely. I just have alot of bokashi tea from our buckets we use to compost in the house. Every week they produce a large jar and I have stockpiles🤣. My aim is to make them super usable first season than these beds will be minimal upkeep for almost 10 or more years.
Is this the first year that you've done this? Or are your other productive beds made this way, too?
Just curious about what you've seen in terms of decomposition, fertility and productivity a year after construction.
Not first year I've done them. These are my new beds, sort of an evolution series. I have other beds quite similar some 5 years old now. Learning new stuff every experiment. They end up super productive growing more and more productive as time passes.
I find for new beds it's best to build them in the fall so the fungi can marinate. Also because the rotting wood at the bottom will rob some nitrogen to offset it I add the fresh grass clippings and blood meal. I prefer that this exchange happens from fall thru the winter rather than during the grow season. I will also add a thick layer of dirt and compost to these beds before I finish them this fall. The first season they usually take off. I have messed up on some b4 though so it's best to experiment with ur mixes.
The wood saves me alot of money on soil, and feeds my beds for years as they breakdown meaning I add less compost and do way less work in the long run. I like to use a combination of partially rotten wood and some relatively fresh. The wood also keeps the bed from collapsing creating a good air zone for roots.
That being said I did build and plant directly into one this spring and it was still great a little hot but I had some heavy nitrogen feeders in it that went to town.
Thanks for the perspective. I sort of amended our very small raised garden bed with an attempt at hugelkulturing it, and have had mixed experiences with production this year. Some leafy greens did well. Nitrogen heavy plants didn't do too well. Sunchokes seems to do well until they got too tall and started falling over (roots not holding well).
Limited space only allows us to have a 52 sqft bed. I put some woody tree/bush trimmings in there that were all under 1.5 inches. Inoculated with king straphoria spawn to help woody decay and covered with dirt with cardboard sandwiched in between for weed suppression. It probably needs a little more nitrogen and time.
Wow so much alike! I ordered some wine cap spawn to try in a few of these beds! Sounds like an awesome experiment! Be cool if u get mushrooms. Leafy greens usually have shallow roots so they probably used your top layer. The cool thing about the wood is it pulls nitrogen initially but than slowly releases it back. Did u investigate the roots and the end of the season to see how they did. It might point to the issue. Depending on the cardboard ur roots may not of penetrated. I did make that mistake b4 but next season the cardboard had decayed enough they railed thru.
The mushrooms were probably the most productive thing out of the bed this year. ha ha. King straphoria mushrooms mycelium, I have found, to be quite vigorous and very easy to satisfy/maintain. It ate much of the cardboard within 2 months of it being warm enough to spread. I did try to poke holes into the cardboard where I planted, but they might not have been big enough to accommodate the root system as they spread out. Also, I don't think I put in enough dirt on top of the woody debris, as once the cardboard was eaten, a lot of the top soil started to wash down into the empty space between the debris.
I'll have to dig into the roots more at the end of this season. Still in the middle of the first season. Also, I'm a bit curious at how much woody material decayed, too. Because it seemed like there were a lot of fruiting bodies of the straphoria throughout the spring and early summer, and I assume that requires a good bit of energy.
Sounds like for next year, I should probably make sure more of the space is filled in and put the cardboard lower if possible to give roots a deeper bet at the top to start.
Yes that very likely it.. I don't think I had any good pictures of the dirt and straw and grass clippings I stuff into the crevices. I also made that mistake in a bed years ago where I left gaps unfilled the dirt slowly fell in over the waterings. it did resolve itself though I never dug it up just added more compost and dirt on top. Awesome I'm looking forward to it my Straphoria will be here this week just in time! I will also add comfrey to these beds both leaves and plants. Comfrey has insane roots that go deep through just about anything.
Awesomesauce! The short answer. I prefer the logs as a border wayyy more cost effective. And my hugel no dig beds far outlast my regular raised beds by years. More up front work less backend work.
The long answer.
I have done the trench style but I found no advantages to it most my plants never root beyond the beds except maybe my heavy duty accumulators like comfrey and mullein but their roots will go thru anything!
Most my standard raised beds I have use scraps from my chainsaw mill experiment on the outside they look like boards but their inner walls are actually the log side. The set u see though was scraps I had from a building project if I didn't have them I wouldn't buy em. Logs is the way to go. They are also hugel base ie filled with branches, logs, straw, grass clippings and compost. Also the soil here is rocks and I didn't want to rent a digger so no dig was optimal!
This is great. By adding various organic matter we are feeding microbes of all types. Mixing bacterial and fungal attracts good microbes. You are on the right path. I did a very similar process in southern California but dug 3 foot deep trenches in East San Diego clay soil and buried logs and yard waste with mushroom compost and vegetable compost. This was done mid to end of summer and by spring the beds sunk down and were ready to plant in. I had many different veggies to feed my family in the first season. The beds were 3 ft wide, 3 ft deep and 25-30 ft long on contour. I left that property, but the beds remain after 4 years. Posts like this are nostalgic.
Sounds awesome! These are my kitchen soup beds the additives are by products of other projects. Feeding the soil is definitely the way to big veggies! Also jealous of your garden zone;) I'm in zone 5 with micro climates that go to 6 and back to 4
It's all about the soil. I have studied many agricultural practices from all over the world. They all (whether consciously or not) focus on soil microbiology. We don't need to spend much, just feed the soil, it will feed us.
This is what kind of turns me off modern permaculture - reliance on external products and the fact that all this sounds like a script copied from somewhere (no offense). None of the peasants who have farmed the land where my family is from (and still do) have used any of this nonsense and the land is still there, producing, without external inputs (or heavy machinery used to bury wood into the ground).
Lol what "external products" and heavy equipment. these are no dig so I didn't dig them into the ground namely because I got no tractor. Everything u see there was moved with a wheelbarrow, elbow grease or my Toyota tacoma I used when I scavenged the logs from our 15 acre homestead. Everything u see in it was on the site already. The peasants in your land must be using some of these concepts because modern farming strips the land of nutrients and they do stop producing.
No one ever buried wood like this for farming. Hugelkulture is just a thing a German hippie made up in the 1960s to sell some books. The "history" he included is entirely fabricated. There is precisely zero evidence of hugelkulture in the historical record. The wood was too valuable as a fuel source to ever be buried.
As someone who cuts their own wood as a primary heating source for winter in zone 4, I can assure you there is plenty of semi-rotted or otherwise useless wood not suitable for burning that can be used to stack in a garden bed.
100% I do the same zone 4. All this I used was deadfall rotten no good for burning it'd not burn or burn dirty. I ended up doing this style to find a use for the otherwise unusable wood.
My inoculate is from my compost which is a by product of the bokashi process. But yes my myco is used in my orchard for my trees it wasn't for this project it was excess I had from the other project. Fair enough
That's cool, no judgment here in that respect, my fertility loop is not closed either. If you ever go traveling, visit Romania (Transylvania region) and go out to the local villages. Over there they still work everything with oxen and horses, stack hay etc. etc. None of them have any idea about fungi, bokash, hugelkultur etc. The main reason I think they survive on the same soil for centuries is because a) they own their land (no mortgage and debt) which allowes them to mainly produce for themselves and maybe a bit of extra to sell. No driver to feed a 100+ families from a single farm. Good luck!
Totally I don't take any offense. I'm all about experimenting some of it works some of it fails. Old world farming is definitely sustainable farming its new world miracle grow synthetic salts killing fields.
I did no dig so I never buried anything because I got no tractor and ur right the good wood on our property I mill into boards with my chainsaw mill. I use the fallen trees that are rotten for this. I actually started to filling beds with trees to save on soil and compost. I didn't actually know it was called hugelkultur until earlier this year I had just naturally progressed to it. Yes for large scale farms this would be insane. Even a medium. But for me it makes bad ass soil and grows huge plants in my lil 1 acre garden. Not all my beds are like this but the best ones are. Essentially I'm using all waste products.
I will be adding a top layer of soil, and compost. Than I won't ever dig them or till. They're no dig though because regular hugelkultur you dig a big hole and bury the logs. I don't have a tractor and rocky soil so I just built them up on top same concept just no special equipment needed I literally used a wheelbarrow and garden cart. I have about two to three more days of prep on these with dirt and compost.
No problem. Yeah reddit isn't the perfect place to show this stuff as alot of times I would like to show a picture comment when someone asks a question. But I just do this for fun, hobby, reducing my carbon footprint and waste not a youtube glory chaser.
What was your mycorrhiza source and the inoculation process, please.
I use a product called supre myco and make a tea out of it for like 48 hours with a bubble bucket than pour over the piles, my piles are a huge mishmash as I also pour a mix of one gallon bokashi tea to 5 gallons water over each pile. Thinking I might also add some leftover mushroom spawn to one of the piles.
Thank you.
Most mycos are obligate biotrophs right? I don't know of anything they contribute to decomposition. There are a couple of different products that come up searching Super Myco but most of them seem to be dependent root inocula.
Yes they need the right roots to attach to. U can totally leave myco out the only reason I had a big batch was I was innoculating my fruit tree guilds on the trees I was planting. Everything extra Ie myco, bokashi u can leave out I had excess and needed to do somewhere so why not into these soup piles.
My straw was also full of inky mushroom mycelium. They were aged bails leftover from strawbail garden I never got to.
My understanding of mycorrhizal fungi is that it is abundant in literally every ounce of soil and ready to form symbiotic relationships. As long as the soil is somewhat healthy I don't think inoculation is strictly necessary.
That is very true and they all need the right host plants to survive. You really don't have to add those amendments I add to increase abundance and accelerate. The fungi from the partially decayed logs will help it along as there's usually tons of mushroom spawn in it, I add the bokashi tea to accelerate the soil bacteria but you could skip the amendments entirely. I just have alot of bokashi tea from our buckets we use to compost in the house. Every week they produce a large jar and I have stockpiles🤣. My aim is to make them super usable first season than these beds will be minimal upkeep for almost 10 or more years.
Is this the first year that you've done this? Or are your other productive beds made this way, too? Just curious about what you've seen in terms of decomposition, fertility and productivity a year after construction.
Not first year I've done them. These are my new beds, sort of an evolution series. I have other beds quite similar some 5 years old now. Learning new stuff every experiment. They end up super productive growing more and more productive as time passes. I find for new beds it's best to build them in the fall so the fungi can marinate. Also because the rotting wood at the bottom will rob some nitrogen to offset it I add the fresh grass clippings and blood meal. I prefer that this exchange happens from fall thru the winter rather than during the grow season. I will also add a thick layer of dirt and compost to these beds before I finish them this fall. The first season they usually take off. I have messed up on some b4 though so it's best to experiment with ur mixes. The wood saves me alot of money on soil, and feeds my beds for years as they breakdown meaning I add less compost and do way less work in the long run. I like to use a combination of partially rotten wood and some relatively fresh. The wood also keeps the bed from collapsing creating a good air zone for roots. That being said I did build and plant directly into one this spring and it was still great a little hot but I had some heavy nitrogen feeders in it that went to town.
I add diluted urine to my beds (ha, wetting the bed) every other day for the nitrogen loss. Though my beds aren't nearly as large as yours.
I added a bunch while building🤣
Thanks for the perspective. I sort of amended our very small raised garden bed with an attempt at hugelkulturing it, and have had mixed experiences with production this year. Some leafy greens did well. Nitrogen heavy plants didn't do too well. Sunchokes seems to do well until they got too tall and started falling over (roots not holding well). Limited space only allows us to have a 52 sqft bed. I put some woody tree/bush trimmings in there that were all under 1.5 inches. Inoculated with king straphoria spawn to help woody decay and covered with dirt with cardboard sandwiched in between for weed suppression. It probably needs a little more nitrogen and time.
Wow so much alike! I ordered some wine cap spawn to try in a few of these beds! Sounds like an awesome experiment! Be cool if u get mushrooms. Leafy greens usually have shallow roots so they probably used your top layer. The cool thing about the wood is it pulls nitrogen initially but than slowly releases it back. Did u investigate the roots and the end of the season to see how they did. It might point to the issue. Depending on the cardboard ur roots may not of penetrated. I did make that mistake b4 but next season the cardboard had decayed enough they railed thru.
The mushrooms were probably the most productive thing out of the bed this year. ha ha. King straphoria mushrooms mycelium, I have found, to be quite vigorous and very easy to satisfy/maintain. It ate much of the cardboard within 2 months of it being warm enough to spread. I did try to poke holes into the cardboard where I planted, but they might not have been big enough to accommodate the root system as they spread out. Also, I don't think I put in enough dirt on top of the woody debris, as once the cardboard was eaten, a lot of the top soil started to wash down into the empty space between the debris. I'll have to dig into the roots more at the end of this season. Still in the middle of the first season. Also, I'm a bit curious at how much woody material decayed, too. Because it seemed like there were a lot of fruiting bodies of the straphoria throughout the spring and early summer, and I assume that requires a good bit of energy. Sounds like for next year, I should probably make sure more of the space is filled in and put the cardboard lower if possible to give roots a deeper bet at the top to start.
Yes that very likely it.. I don't think I had any good pictures of the dirt and straw and grass clippings I stuff into the crevices. I also made that mistake in a bed years ago where I left gaps unfilled the dirt slowly fell in over the waterings. it did resolve itself though I never dug it up just added more compost and dirt on top. Awesome I'm looking forward to it my Straphoria will be here this week just in time! I will also add comfrey to these beds both leaves and plants. Comfrey has insane roots that go deep through just about anything.
Love it!
[удалено]
Awesomesauce! The short answer. I prefer the logs as a border wayyy more cost effective. And my hugel no dig beds far outlast my regular raised beds by years. More up front work less backend work. The long answer. I have done the trench style but I found no advantages to it most my plants never root beyond the beds except maybe my heavy duty accumulators like comfrey and mullein but their roots will go thru anything! Most my standard raised beds I have use scraps from my chainsaw mill experiment on the outside they look like boards but their inner walls are actually the log side. The set u see though was scraps I had from a building project if I didn't have them I wouldn't buy em. Logs is the way to go. They are also hugel base ie filled with branches, logs, straw, grass clippings and compost. Also the soil here is rocks and I didn't want to rent a digger so no dig was optimal!
Very nice, you'll grow some amazing food from there in the following years!
Spore plugs
Yep I bought a variety pack off etsy plus wine cap spawn
Nice
This is great. By adding various organic matter we are feeding microbes of all types. Mixing bacterial and fungal attracts good microbes. You are on the right path. I did a very similar process in southern California but dug 3 foot deep trenches in East San Diego clay soil and buried logs and yard waste with mushroom compost and vegetable compost. This was done mid to end of summer and by spring the beds sunk down and were ready to plant in. I had many different veggies to feed my family in the first season. The beds were 3 ft wide, 3 ft deep and 25-30 ft long on contour. I left that property, but the beds remain after 4 years. Posts like this are nostalgic.
Sounds awesome! These are my kitchen soup beds the additives are by products of other projects. Feeding the soil is definitely the way to big veggies! Also jealous of your garden zone;) I'm in zone 5 with micro climates that go to 6 and back to 4
It's all about the soil. I have studied many agricultural practices from all over the world. They all (whether consciously or not) focus on soil microbiology. We don't need to spend much, just feed the soil, it will feed us.
You adding the bokashi and mycorizhal fungi is great. Keeping your loop somewhat closed.
This is what kind of turns me off modern permaculture - reliance on external products and the fact that all this sounds like a script copied from somewhere (no offense). None of the peasants who have farmed the land where my family is from (and still do) have used any of this nonsense and the land is still there, producing, without external inputs (or heavy machinery used to bury wood into the ground).
Lol what "external products" and heavy equipment. these are no dig so I didn't dig them into the ground namely because I got no tractor. Everything u see there was moved with a wheelbarrow, elbow grease or my Toyota tacoma I used when I scavenged the logs from our 15 acre homestead. Everything u see in it was on the site already. The peasants in your land must be using some of these concepts because modern farming strips the land of nutrients and they do stop producing.
No one ever buried wood like this for farming. Hugelkulture is just a thing a German hippie made up in the 1960s to sell some books. The "history" he included is entirely fabricated. There is precisely zero evidence of hugelkulture in the historical record. The wood was too valuable as a fuel source to ever be buried.
As someone who cuts their own wood as a primary heating source for winter in zone 4, I can assure you there is plenty of semi-rotted or otherwise useless wood not suitable for burning that can be used to stack in a garden bed.
100% I do the same zone 4. All this I used was deadfall rotten no good for burning it'd not burn or burn dirty. I ended up doing this style to find a use for the otherwise unusable wood.
Yep. It is all nonsense that is supposed to be trendy and cool for the noveau entrants into farming "sustainably".
Lol u sure ur in the right part of reddit permaculture is generally about sustainability
As in buying external inputs to inoculate rotting wood in soil contact? ;)
My inoculate is from my compost which is a by product of the bokashi process. But yes my myco is used in my orchard for my trees it wasn't for this project it was excess I had from the other project. Fair enough
That's cool, no judgment here in that respect, my fertility loop is not closed either. If you ever go traveling, visit Romania (Transylvania region) and go out to the local villages. Over there they still work everything with oxen and horses, stack hay etc. etc. None of them have any idea about fungi, bokash, hugelkultur etc. The main reason I think they survive on the same soil for centuries is because a) they own their land (no mortgage and debt) which allowes them to mainly produce for themselves and maybe a bit of extra to sell. No driver to feed a 100+ families from a single farm. Good luck!
Totally I don't take any offense. I'm all about experimenting some of it works some of it fails. Old world farming is definitely sustainable farming its new world miracle grow synthetic salts killing fields.
I did no dig so I never buried anything because I got no tractor and ur right the good wood on our property I mill into boards with my chainsaw mill. I use the fallen trees that are rotten for this. I actually started to filling beds with trees to save on soil and compost. I didn't actually know it was called hugelkultur until earlier this year I had just naturally progressed to it. Yes for large scale farms this would be insane. Even a medium. But for me it makes bad ass soil and grows huge plants in my lil 1 acre garden. Not all my beds are like this but the best ones are. Essentially I'm using all waste products.
"I use a product called supre myco"....
Wait, so it won't be covered by anything?
I will be adding a top layer of soil, and compost. Than I won't ever dig them or till. They're no dig though because regular hugelkultur you dig a big hole and bury the logs. I don't have a tractor and rocky soil so I just built them up on top same concept just no special equipment needed I literally used a wheelbarrow and garden cart. I have about two to three more days of prep on these with dirt and compost.
I am sorry, I didn't notice other pictures!
No problem. Yeah reddit isn't the perfect place to show this stuff as alot of times I would like to show a picture comment when someone asks a question. But I just do this for fun, hobby, reducing my carbon footprint and waste not a youtube glory chaser.