Rated
Sep 24
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3 reviews
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gardening, mushrooms, urban agriculture
• motherearthnews.com
I'm planning a mushroom growing cellar under my elevated chook house. Here is the low down on how mushrooms do it differently!
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, which grow quite differently from plants. Beginning as dustlike spores released from the gills or pores beneath the cap, mushrooms spend much of their life as mycelium -- a network of moist fibers that use powerful enzymes to penetrate wood or other organic matter. Chemically, mycelium does the opposite of what plants do. "It's the reverse of photosynthesis," Stamets says. "Mushrooms take in carbon and consume oxygen, while plants consume carbon dioxide, and create carbon and oxygen." Materials rich in carbon that tend to break down slowly, wood, for example, are the preferred substrate of many culinary mushrooms, but there is a fungus at work in nearly every ecological situation. "Fungi govern the decomposition cycles, and make it possible for natural biological systems to operate," Stamets says. "They are tremendous allies for the health of people and the planet."