Fungi on the Homestead
I love finding mushrooms on my homestead. To me they are a sign that my soil is improving and my plants will be growing well. Plus, some of the mushrooms are very tasty!
I'm always adding mulch to my homestead (often wood chips) which provides the perfect environment for fungi. Without doing anything special to inoculate the mulch the fungi just show up and make themselves known by the mushrooms that pop up after a rainstorm.
Edible Mushrooms as a Bonus
One of the smaller morels that showed up
I'm not an expert in mushrooms so I won't try to list the edible ones that might show up in your mulch. But I was lucky enough last year (and I hope this year!) to get some morels showing up! My wife and I harvested them and used them on homemade pizza.
Another edible mushroom that has shown up is turkey tail. While edible it is more used for medicinal purposes instead of being used as a food crop. It is supposed to help boost your immune system. I have been eating it on and off to hopefully help me avoid getting a cold or flue.
Both of these mushrooms just showed up on their own. The turkey tail was actually not in the mulch but growing on logs and stumps that I added to my homestead.
The more I mimic a forest the more I seem to get for free!
Benefits to the Homestead
Turkey tail mushroom growing on a log that I stuck in the ground at my homestead
Fungi help breakdown wood chips and other plant material that falls to the ground. This builds soil and also feeds your plants and soil life.
But fungi do more than just that.
Some fungi connect to the roots of plants and even interconnect plants to each other. This results in what is sometimes called the Wood Wide Web.
Through this web nutrients and water are shared between plants. Even more amazing is that the plants can warn each other about threats through this web.
The fungi in the soil also help protect plants from fungi that would damage or kill the plants.
All in all fungi are an amazing partner for any homesteader... assuming you create a welcoming habitat for them!
Putting mulch down on your homestead is a great first step--you can learn more about how to do that on this week's blog post on my blog Wild Homesteading.
If you want to learn more about fungi and how they can benefit your plants check out this awesome video:
Thank you all and I hope you found this post useful. If you liked it please upvote it and leave a comment with your thoughts on fungi on the homestead.
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Thank you! :)
Such an interesting post; it's amazing to me how many different types of mushrooms there really are!
I found your post because @porters featured you in a Pay it Forward Curation contest entry 😊
Thank you! :)
Great article, @wildhomesteading! Thanks for sharing!
Congratulations on being featured by @porters in her entry for the Pay It Forward Contest!
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Thank you! :)
Lot's of great info there.
We had the same experience when they put down wood chips in the playground at the school and the kids were finding morel mushrooms growing in it!
I was so pleased to be able to tell them that it is and edible mushroom and that inspired them to seek out more.
Great fan of mulching in the garden for it's many benefits it brings.
thanks for sharing!
Thank you! :)
Great post with lots of good info. I like mushrooms and have done some foraging as well - I remember the one year I found a couple of morels when I wasn't even looking. Bonus!
I found you today because @porters featured you in the Pay it Forward Curation contest. Keep up the great work!
Thank you :) and yeah, it is fun to find morels--first time I found them I was not expecting them at all.
Gah! I'm on a resteem binge today thanks to you and HSCO!
I'm in love with fungi lately. I had given up on getting wood chips for a while because the last chipper crew I talked to told me that nobody would be able to dump here because of my big trees. Huge bummer, but now you're reviving that desire.
:) Thanks for the resteem! Sorry to hear about the issue getting chips dropped off. Try looking for compost facilities in your area--one near me gives away wood chips (small and large in two different piles) for free and will even load a pickup truck or trailer. That might be an option if you can find a place near you.
The top orange mushrooms look almost like an oyster though i would need to see the gill pattern to be sure.
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Oops nevermind about the oyster comment i see the stems coming out of the ground now, i thought they were growing out of the log.
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Ya, I get these growing all over my mulched areas. Thanks for the comment! I'm still learning how to ID mushrooms.
Hopefully you get alot more morels out of that mulch. Most of the morels i find are in dark soil next to dead elm, ash or oak trees. I bet if you woodchip those types of trees the morels will be more plentiful. There's also some cool outdoor kits from fungi.com to use with mulch.
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Nice - thanks for the tip! I will check out that site.