Mulch with sawdust, rice bran and spent mushroom substrate and you get a much quicker return on new fruit trees. This is a large Myro rootstock sucker I planted in the spring and have grafted a few plum varieties on it. This is the second flush on this mulch, first was two pounds, if the slugs stay off it this will probably be another 3 to 5 pounds. Plus this feeds the tree a bit rather than taking resources like plating other plants below it.
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thats cool! where did you get the shroom substrate? i have winecaps around my trees from a bed of them i made under my bug spruces 6 years ago and im, still getting flushes but not as much as the 1st year obviously. Got blewits around the compost pile also.
thinking of doing elm oysters next year. what type you got coming up? not oysters.
I grow mushrooms semi professionally. I may have some spent stuff later in the year. I used all that I had as mulch already.
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ive seen mushroom compost sold at lowes but theres no telling what species if any would come up out of it. its free spawn so might be worth putting some down then mulch with hardwood on it. i have a firewood business down the road i can get it coarse sawdust for free. ive used hardwood pellets also to grow oysters out in. works great as it packs in tight once wetted.
It’s almost 100% likely to be button mushrooms. Those are yellow oysters under my trees. Not my favorite, but I had a bunch of blocks left over. Black king oysters do pretty well in a sawdust pile as well and I prefer them. Had phoenix oysters in straw in the garden too and those are great as well. The Phoenix and yellow will fruit in the summer which is a benefit, most other oysters would probably only fruit in the spring and fall.
I’ll probably plant some cranberries under there too once the trees are more established, that will give more fruit and help mushrooms stay a bit shaded as they develop and still not compete with the tree.
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ive used lowbush blueberry , alpine strawberry and ligonberry. all very shallow rooted. the strawberry probably would be the better one as shroom compost tends to be on the basic side. the others we mentioned like acidity.