Mushrooms / fungi /

Mushrooms

Mushroom Circle - using i-phone

Mushroom circle - using camera

Big mushrooms

Everywhere at the Battleground place, there are mushrooms now.  Big mushrooms, little mushrooms, clusters, a fairy ring / mushroom circle.  Dark brown.  Near white.  In raised beds - new soil; in lawn - old soil, in the orchard, on the hill.  It's amazing how many mushrooms there are.

I don't know their names.  I don't know if any are edible, so I won't.

Looking at them now, there are so many, the soil must be well populated with mycelia throughout.  So I think adding mycorrhizal inocculant must be like bringing coal to Newcastle.  Probably not needed.  

Mushrooms

 This is the season for mushrooms in the Battleground yard.  I don't know the varieties.

Having read about the importance of mycorrhizal fungi, I welcome the appearance of these organisms.  Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of vast networks of underground fungus - mycelium.  A number of works express alarm at practices that result in killing off mycorrhizae.  Fertilizers, herbicides, and tilling are the main culprits.

These fungi are considered beneficial.  They interact with plant roots to bring water and nutrients into the plants.  There is also a disease-resistance benefit.  Mycorhizae help build soil structure.  They are part of the soil ecosystem balance.

 I have added mycorrhizal inoculant to garden beds and plantings of trees and shrubs.  Given the prevalence of local mushrooms, that might not be necessary.

I think all of these originate with the local soil.  There were smaller mushrooms in one iris raised bed.  Those could either be of local origin, or via the inoculant. 

Madrone roots

Here is the madrone, taken out of the container.  I felt disappointed - the roots were so minimal.  The tree had been dug close to the trunk, and shallow  The remainder was added compost / soil.  It did look like there was mycorrhizae growing through the medium.  I mixed the medium with soil and placed that around the planted tree.

It will be pretty surprising if this tree grows.  I'll try to water it enough, but not too much.  I added a stake given how little root mass there is to anchor it.

I will also order some more Plant Success mycorrhizal inoculant to add to the soil and water in when it arrives.

Madrone, planted

Winter Planting. Grape Vine and Anemones.

I saw this grape variety at the local "Everything Store". Remembering, Buffalo is considered a Concord-like grape that bears in this cool summer area, unlike Concord. The plant looked OK, so I bought it and planted it today. Other plants in the grape / kiwi row have been harassed by moles, so I planted in a chicken wire basket. WA State extension lists these grapes as potential table grapes for this area:

Buffalo – midseason Concord type, blue
Canadice – early pinkish red (I have Canadice, the grapes are small and I'm not crazy about the taste) Interlaken Seedless – early white, vigorous (I have Interlaken, I like this one)
Jupiter – early, blue, large berries
Lynden Blue – very early blue, seeded
Mars – medium early, blue
Neptune – medium early, white
Reliance – early, red, table and juice
Saturn – medium early, red
Van Buren – blue Concord type, early
Vanessa – early red
Venus – early red (I think this is wrong. I have Venus, it's good but they are blue. I like Concord-type grapes better)
NY 78.836.06 – selection from Geneva, NY breeding program

I also planted these Anemones. I've read that anemones are both deer and rabbit resistant. After reading that Muscari are deer resistant, I planted quite a few this winter. Rabbits have eaten them all off. I'm guessing it's rabbits. We'll see what they think of Anemones. Soaked for 2 hours per label instructions, and planted in the tree circles.

Fig cuttings

These are started 2 to 4 weeks ago.  Depends on the cutting.  The Lattarula is covered on 3 sides with the start of roots.  What fig hobbyists call "root initials".  The Marseille black is not there yet.  I check every other day.  If the paper towel is looking moldy, I rinse the cutting and soak a fresh piece of paper towel to replace the fouled one.  Seems to be working.

Here are 4 cuttings in containers.  The Atreano was making top sprouts, so I potted it up.  It has initials but no roots.  It will need careful nurturing. The Sal's fig was a branch below soil level, that had tiny roots before I pruned it off, and when I removed it from seed starting medium I knocked off most of the roots.  Now it has tiny green buds swelling, so I think it is surviving despite my efforts.  The LSU Tiger cutting had roots about 2mm long, so time to plant that one in seed starting medium.

Today I scratched Plant Success (that again) into the top inch of each of these containers.  I don't think it will hurt.  It might help.

Of these, the Atreano, the LSU Tiger, and the Atreano were sent by generous Fig Forum members.  Response to my sending out cuttings last month.  Nice gardener neighborliness, from a distance..

Winter Gardening for Spring Vegetables

This is a start for gardening for the year.  The raised bed is the standard 4ft by 8ft raised bed that I've been building.  This is the 4th one so far.  The difference now is, I wanted a cover, to warm it up a few degrees.  Pus, protection from deer and rabbits once the cover is in place.

The cover consisted of:
6 2ft rebars.
12 copper brackets with nails
3 10ft long vinyl pipes
2 sections of 4 ft wide chicken wire
row cover.

All but the row cover came from the big orange home improvement store.  The row cover is from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  The chicken wire is held in place by plastic bale twine, recycled.

With row cover in place.  It looks like a conastoga wagon without the wheels.  The row cover wasn't quite wide enough, but I'll get some clothes pins to hold it to the chicken wire.

The rebar is easily removed, in case I don't want to keep this arrangement in place.

The tallest portion of the hoops is about 4 feet tall.  That height will be plenty tall enough for most vegetables, including tomatoes and okra.  But those are for May or June planting.  Here, I planted Oregon Giant snow peas, which grow 3  or 3 1/2 feet tall.  The packet states sow as soon as ground can be worked, so here we are.  Before planting, I sprinkled Plant Success mycorrhyzal inoculant on the surface and worked it in.  Probably more important, I used legume Rhizobium inoculant from Territorial Seeds - made a slurry in water, swirled the seeds around in the slurry, let them soak 10 minutes, then planted and watered in with the rest of the slurry.

Also planted, after adding Plant Success as sort of a "good wishes":
Boston Red Beets 1/2 row
Mini Bok Choy, from New Dimension seeds. 1/2 row
German Giant radish, 1/2 row.
French Breakfast radish, 1/2 row.

There is room for a row of spinach and a row of mesclun.  Room fills up fast.  May need to build a second raised bed for more winter vegetables.

As always this is an experiment.  I don't think it's too early.  I planted radishes and other cold tolerant vegetables in late January, 2011, and they grew nicely.

Moving a big Camelia

This camelia has been in front of the house for about 9 years. The original plan was to espalier the camelia, but it got away from me. It was too big for this location. I could have just cut it down, but decided to move it along with the rest of the migration of trees and shrubs to the battleground place. This, and a pieris from the back yard, is the last of the major shrubs or trees to move. Some small stuff could follow.

This location was very crowded. The camelia, some clematis, hostas, and bulbs. I dug out a hosta to give myself room to work, and re-planted the hosta when done. The roots grew laterally and under the sidewalk, but the root mass was reasonably compact.

After trenching, I undercut, then sliced behind the bush. Tipped it, slid onto a sheet of cardboard, and onto the truck.

Here in the wheelbarrow. I added Mycorhizal inoculant. Most likely there is already a poipulation of mycorhiza since I'm moving a big root mass. No pic in final location - if it blooms in a couple of months, I'll add a pic then.

Mycorhizal Inoculant

I've been reading up on the soil "world wide web" of fungal mycelia. These organisms benefit plants and trees in many ways, and connect plants to one another. They transfer nutrition between plants and trees, bring nutrition from otherwise unavailable sources in the soil, improve root growth, stimulate top growth, improve drought resistance, and improve disease resistance. Apparently, disturbance of soil can reduce or eliminate some mycorrhizal mycelial webs, which take a long time to regenerate. Those disturbance include plowing, tilling, soil compaction, fertilizing, and pesticides. The marketing argument for inoculants is, they replenish the mycelial web at the place where it is most needed, the plant root. Technically, once inoculum is added, it should not be needed again.

Plant Success mycorrhizal inoculant list of species. I bought via Amazon.  The advantage is the variety of species.  Different plants benefit from different fungal species, with a lot of overlap.  By providing a variety of species, the thinking is that the ones that can become symbionts with the particular garden plant, will grow, and the others wont hurt anything.  Some plants can use multiple species.  Some mycorrhiza associate with certain plants and not others.

In order to apply at the roots, inoculant is best used at time of planting.  The granules are sprinkled on the plant roots, or in the soil that is then applied to the plant roots.   The alternative is to dig small holes around the plant and sprinkle inoculant into the holes, with the expectation that once against the roots, the mycelium will spread from root to root.

Mykos mycorrhizal inoculant.  I did not see a list of species.  I also could not find that on the website.  From other sites on the internet, it looks like Mykos is one species, Globus intraradices TRI 801, 80 spores per gram.  Reading on mycorhiza, Globus intraradices  is not so likely to benefit woody trees like this hazelnut.  I should have used Plant Success for this.  A lot of other plants should be happy with the G. intraradices so I will use up the package for them.  The main issue is that G. intraradices is an "endo" mycorrhiza, which lives within the root.  Many plants benefit from endo, but apparently a lot of woody trees benefit from "ecto" myorrhiza, which live surrounding the root.

Mushrooms.  I am not adventurous enough to eat them.  This part of the yard has a number of old, nearly decomposed, tree stumps.  There are mushrooms throughout the yard.  There appear to be multiple varieties.

Mushrooms are the fruiting structures of a mature mycorrhizal mycelium, responding to weather or other stimuli to grow and produce spores.  There are thousands of species.

This is one mushroom, near a spruce tree.  There are more of the same type, near other spruce trees.  Which leads me to suspect some species specificity.  Big mushroom.

Seeing mushrooms around the yard, makes me wonder if adding mycorrhizal inoculant is like taking coals to Newcastle.  Maybe.  The raised beds are, by definition, highly disturbed soils.  The first two were filled largely with granular soil from the hundreds of molehills that had baked in the sun.  That was easy to handle and they needed to be removed so mowing would not cause big dust-bowl quality clouds of soil.  So no active mycelia, I'm sure, but maybe lots of spores.   Even though about 1/4 of the volume of those beds was compost, I don't know the mycorrhizal content of the compost.  I suspect this compost's population is mainly bacterial and actinomycete, not mycorrhizal fungi.  No way for me to know, and I don't think anything is hurt by adding some inoculant.

Another argument could be made that the most adapted, most likely to survive and flourish, mycorhiza are the ones that were already growing here.  Valid argument.  I view adding inoculant as a boost for newly planted trees, shrubs, and garden plants.  Since I use lots of mulch and add lots of organic matter, this will be a "one time" effort.

I suspect that some (much?) of the market for mycorrhizal inoculant is in the home production of certain herbal products that I have no interest in growing and don't want to know about.   All I want from it is better trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetables.