[Pil-pc-oceania] Soil Fertility:- Albrecht and Ingham

[Tamara Griffiths]

Geoff taught hot compost and compost tea making in the PDC I did. It
was great. I came straight home, looked up some more info and jumped
in. It was practical stuff and we didn't go into the entire soil food
web, but alot of that is covered using professor google. And it worked! Well I think so anyway!

Then
at the practical course at Bill's last year, Bill gave a 2 hour or so
talk on fungi - how it is harvested from the wild in Korea using cooked
rice, brought home, made into a slurry and poured on the vegie patch
etc. He also talked about dowells and logs for shitake etc. And lots of
fungi related goodies. For spawn (dowell, sawdust, grain etc), try Li
Sun Mushrooms Mittagong, 02 4871 2879.

Ceres is running a
shitake growing course for refugees, and it is very popular, aparently.
I have asked for a tour but they can't at the moment.

I think
Paul stamets' work is very important (as Rosemary mentioned at APC9) and as soon as my fungi patches,
shitake etc on logs and perhaps even bunker spawn get going, I'll be
teaching it as a practical workshop. Bunker spawn on contour might be a
very good option if swales can't be done...
I think some of his methods will find their way into lots of PDCs.

In
the mean time, I am observing the outcome of the "chuck it around"
method - See some fungi - any fungi, anywhere, pick a bit of it (leave
most of it for nature), bring it home and chuck it around the forest
garden, or on substrates similar to the ones I found the fungi on. 

So
far this year, I have had white puff balls and at the moment I have
off white parasol mushrooms (Leucoagaricus leucothites) popping up over a wide area (nice big
mycellium under there :). I have a friend who is a mushroom expert -
when someone eats a sus mushroom and go to the emergency ward, she is
one of the people they contact to get the correct identification -
(quite an amazing woman, actually!) So I send her a pic, with
description, photo, spore colour (from doing a spore print) and get her
to check my identification. I have a couple of books, and I am proud to
say, all my ids have been correct so far - but I get it checked before
I eat it - she told me off for eating white puffballs (Calvati lilacina) without checking with her first - they
have to be eaten very fresh as the purple spores are toxic. 

So
- 
You could email me your mushroom pics and spore colour with an ID and I could get her to check them?

Can you guess I'm obsessed with fungi yet?

Much love,
T

> From: permaculture at apollobay.org.au
> To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org
> Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 06:45:52 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Pil-pc-oceania] Soil Fertility:- Albrecht and Ingham
> 
> 
> 
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Robyn Francis robyn at permaculture.com.au
> 
> 
> >Elaine¹s work, along with Paul Stamets fungi research should be introduced
> >in PDC¹s.
> 
> That's what I thought last year... so that's what I did (put it into the
> Otways PDC).
> Was going to study with Elaine last year, booked in and all, but had to
> pull out (as I over loaded myself)... but Adam did the course with Elaine
> and came and taught her stuff on the PDC instead.  Didn't get to go into
> Stamet's mycology much on the PDC... but probably had too much in the PDC
> as it was.  One of the participants from the PDC is very keen on setting up
> a fungi farm, and has bought all of Stamets books.  Otway Agroforestry
> Network is also doing innoculations trials on different indigenous
> hardwoods for shiitake growing.  
> 
> Definately integrating Elaine Ingram's and Paul Stamet's work into PDC has
> flow on effects.
> 
> Robyn, didn't one (or a few?) of your APT students study with Elaine?  Did
> they teach it in the PDC that you ran over the summer?
> 
> cheers
> Fern   
> 


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