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Posts Tagged ‘herbs’

The best-selling book on “popular mycology,” Mycelium Running, would be a useful reference book in every home, especially to anyone involved in farming (or gardening), forest management and environmental cleanup. The second half of the book is an instruction manual on growing delectable mushrooms for food and medicine.

The book is filled to the brim with valuable information on how to improve soils for farming, gardening and forestry; create simple, low-cost biofilters for waste water (mycofiltration); and clean up toxic waste (mycoremediation).

As an example, a method for building a mycofiltration bed to filter waste water is described in exacting detail. Dimensions, depth, layers and recommended materials and mushrooms are listed. This mycofiltration is useful, among other things, for filtering manure enriched farm runoff.

Added perks when using mycofiltration is that the beds also yield crops of scrumptious food mushrooms, and every 2-3 years, as the bedding material needs to be replaced, the old material can be spread on the farm fields as a rich fertilizer.

Another piece of useful information for farmers and gardeners found in Mycelium Running concerns the no-till farming method as opposed to the conventional method of plowing the fields after harvest. No-till farming helps promote saprophytic fungi (decomposing fungi), which break down organic material at a pace better suited to plant-life than the rapid and heat producing breakdown by anaerobic bacteria, which are the primary decomposers when stubble is plowed under. The mycelium of saprophytic fungi also binds the soil to prevent erosion and loss of valuable nutrients.