I don’t know much about fungi in general. I love it when mushrooms pop up in my garden, but I’ve never grown them deliberately. I know you can buy mushroom kits, but I don’t eat them and so never have. My boyfriend likes them, but he eats the whole thing and so it never ended up in the compost. My compost is going a lot faster these days because I’ve been aerating it. Did you see my pics of the worms it has these days? I’m very proud of this because I’ve never seen so many before. But maybe I should try the muchroom addition too.

I have some log seats on my front porch that get rained on and this winter they started growing orange fungi which was cool. And the other week I found this in my local park.

My header pic was taken in the Blue Mountains National Park, below the Three Sisters. I found orchids too, but haven’t uploaded all the pics yet. I’ve never seen Trametes Versicolor before – I have to go bush walking more often. Has it been globally endemic “forever”? I don’t want a non-native species as my header pic – altho I know the earthworms that i love came to australia in potted plants.

After finding out more about fungi, I think I’m going to have to write a post about them.

Most “exotic” mushrooms are primary decomposers of plant matter.( “saprophytic”> eat wood ) colectively fungi do most of the decomposition half of the ” carbon cycle “, without which we would be knee deep in undecomposed plant matter, and plants would presumably eventually run out of nutrients and growing space.

For reference, the worm can only exract nutrients from its food because of the fungi and bacteria living in its gut, so its the micro organisms actually doing the work. In addition to making plant matter available again to plants, fungi produce a number of enzymes, progressively favouring the next “coloniser” fungi and eventually bacteria, like “forest ecology succession” only faster.

If you have a lot of plant matter going into your compost pile, it may run quicker and make better compost if you give an oyster mushroom in water a quick burst in a blender and add to pile. This would also be beneficial for your worms, and plants which get the compost later. Worth a try, and a good low imput experiment in growing mushrooms, just a thought.

Regarding the header photo of fungi on a log on your page, FYI, ( in case you didn’t know) That species is Trametes Versicolor “Kawaratake” ( “tile mushroom” ) known in US as “turkey tail” mushroom, it is “cosmopolitan” ( globally endemic ) It is also a medicinal mushroom, as many “polyphores” are, and has anticancer effectiveness, among others. See fungi perfecti website if interested in learning more. ( I have no commercial relationship with them )

Well, sorry if this is not useful to you, good luck to you.

Scott Feeney