Whatcom Mycological Response Team

Comment

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 12, 2011 at 8:04pm

Hey Juliet, It might be better to separate the wood chip question into two discussions: fermentation and the anaerobic/aerobic window. I believe it was in “Breakfast of Champions” Kurt Vonnegut clued me into yeast eating sugar and pooping out alcohol. ( I don’t think Vonnegut said poop.) I used to brew a little beer from time to time, and found when I kept the yeast at comfortable 70 degrees, they went through the sugar the quickest. A batch would take one and a half months. I never tried brewing a lager which takes longer ( more like a four month time frame) and is done with cooler temperature. The sugar, for our purpose, is leeched from the soaked chips. The yeast comes from the wild, as the 55 gal. food grade barrel is open on top. After a week and a half it was smelling ripe and bubbling. At Fungi Perfecti they showed a person using the large galvanized horse water containers for this process. My brewing experience makes me think this would take a little longer in cooler temps.

For the other discussion I turn to Alan Bates and his brilliant book “The Biochar Solution”. He states that “ In a compost pile , the right conditions allow beneficial organisms = air breathing bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa, and microarthropods = to out compete their rivals. Non beneficial organisms typically grow better in anaerobic ( oxygen starved ) conditions, so the first thing a good farmer like John Adams did was to make sure his pile had plenty of air.” Seeing we are wanting fungi to have the advantage in all of this, the fermented chips are exposed to air for an hour, and thus the window of opportunity to introduce the mycelium to the chips and place the chips into burlap bags. The bags were placed on a pallet and covered with plastic to retain moisture. 30 days later the mycelium had established itself and the bags were ready to be placed. This method was useful to get the number of bags I needed for the sediment runoff project. While the chips were soaking away I would pasteurize other chips and bag them up as well. It came together quite nicely.

Good find on the non sterile technique. I was looking at solar autoclaves a few weeks back thinking of the EDAP, but that will have to be another discussion down the road. Take care JC

 

Comment by Jennifer Kinder on March 3, 2011 at 5:34am

Hello all,

Would anyone here be available as a consultant for a possible future mycoremediation or phytoremediation project?

An organization called the Native American Youth Association here in Portland, OR is considering a project like this for a small site that they would like to use as a learing garden in the future. Currently their property is surrounded by industial equipment yards- so it is likely that toxic constituents will be found in their soil.

Thank you for your reply,

Jennifer Kinder

Comment by Juliet Thompson on March 3, 2011 at 12:50am

Hi JC,

So any chance you can give more info about those lignin specific anaerobic organisms? Cause I'm not getting it from the info you've provided, nor is the web giving much info on this method of fermentation.

 I finally did some research into other peoples' experience with non-sterile growing and found this page: http://www.fungiforum.com/index.php? showtopic=551 - So far it best fits my intuition/ experience with this -  we had such success with warmer temperatures under relatively unsterile conditions for the grain masters, which makes me think that doing inoculation on anything but super-fresh kiln-dried substrate and warmish temperatures could be difficult in our climate. 

Well now, we've got to make it out to your place sometime and see what you've been up to. Hope to see you soon.

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 2, 2011 at 9:27am

Hey Juliet, The goal is to get the chips to ferment, so the soaking goes for a week and a half to  two weeks. Also it was warmer when I did this. After creating the anaerobic condition, expose the chips to air for an hour( the aerobic ) then add the mycelium and bag. I think your three month old chips will work just fine. Good luck.  JC

Comment by Juliet Thompson on March 1, 2011 at 11:59pm

Hi, I've got a question for JC or anyone else who can help --

JC, I've heard you say that you soaked woodchips before using/mixing them with mycelium. Can you fill me in on the details, i.e. can you use older wood chips (alder, maple) if you soak them first? The chips I've been offered are about 3 months old.

I'm also wondering how long the chips are soaked for, and what the reason behind doing it is.

Thanks, Juliet

Comment by Heather K on February 15, 2011 at 12:25am

Herbicidal Contamination of our Farmlands & Waters! - New Blog post-

“Can We Create Solutions to Protect the health of the soils & waters of our homeland?” -

 TW wide blog post with info on herbicide aminopyralid & upcoming event.

http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/profiles/blogs/herbicidal-contamination-of

 

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WSU-Ag Extension Event March 2 info- http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/events/herbicide-contamination-in

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Chris & Juliet gave the best ever hands-on  workshop in January at Inspiration Farm!!

Comment by Melissa Miles on February 11, 2011 at 3:57pm

Hello!  I am so happy to have found this group -  I am a Pc teacher/designer, Env. Biologist and ecological restoration practitioner. I have (in the past 2 yrs.) begun to employ mycoremediation/restoration/filtration in my projects - the results so far have been wonderful. I am also doing wkshops for farmers/urban growers on the benefits of these low-tech/inexpensive techniques.  I look forward to learning from others here - thanks for starting this group :)

Comment by Doug Kenfield on January 31, 2011 at 8:37pm

This spring I will return to Cusco, Peru for a visit.  While there I want to initiate a project helping to clean up the Huatanay River.  It flows through Cusco, then feeds into the Urubamba River in the Sacred Valley.  The Huatanay receives sewage, chemicals, and other urban effluent directly through drain pipes.  I'd love some information on the use of mycoremediation to help restore this river to a clean and useful state.

Comment by Charles Kelm on January 18, 2011 at 8:21pm

So 9:30 tomorrow morning at JCs?

Comment by Juliet Thompson on January 10, 2011 at 11:05pm

Hi there,
We're going to do some bunker spawn expanding at Inspiration Farm on Jan. twenty-second from one until four p.m., announcement went on the Events page yesterday. We'll be covering some of what we learned at Stamet's workshop, and then will go through the process of expanding some mycelium from petri dish to grain spawn, from grain spawn to bunker spawn. We'll use only minimally sterile techniques, but have enough mycelium from our first efforts that you should be able to get a good feel for what the process is about. Part two in March - we'll be taking that hopefully grown out bunker spawn and installing it in a filtration berm at one of Inspiration Farm's ponds.

Please RSVP to: chrisandbella@yahoo.com.

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