What is your favorite type of compost

Well... Which is your favorite?

Vermicompost
Mushroom compost
Or good ol' fashioned

My favorite is mushroom compost, but I may be a bit jaded since I grow a lot of edible mushrooms and
sometimes cubensis (magicks). The edibles I grow are shittakes and oysters, which grow on hardwood
substrates these mushrooms break down the lignin and cellulose to make a very rich compost IME. I use
hardwood stove pellets as the substrate and popcorn as the grain spawn. The popcorn gets digested,
but the hulls are left behind and add another aspect to the soil's texture, adding aeration IMO.

Cubensis mushrooms make an excellent compost as well. They are a dung loving species, but you can
substitute compost or worm castings instead of horse manure. I use 3 parts coco to 1 part castings or
compost. If I use horse manure, I use 1:1 coco:horse manure. The best pot I have EVER grown came
from using cubensis compost. Sweetest taste, best burn, most full flavor profile and potency was stellar.
I feel that round showed the full genetic potential because yields were stupid high (~1.5g/w) also.

Just for the fun of it, here are some pictures of previous mushroom grows/grow rooms.











When I don't have mushroom compost, I go with vermicompost.

Moar pics






Some shittakes that are going now, real monsters coming up in this batch.

Nice!

Good form using the grocery sacks for your oyster nuggets.

That shitake is the biggest I've seen. What pellets are you using? Are you doing a hot water pasteurization, or something else like H2O2?

Whats in that mist tub? Looks kinda like a bunch of little ultrasonic mister heads maybe?

How about that other tote, is that a filter unit mounted in it?

Well like I said, very nice. Motivates me to break out and grow some oysters. Maybe shitake too, if your tek is easy enough.

Thanks

I use the pellets from L owes. They are a seasonal item, but are in stock now since winter is coming.

I am doing hot water pasteurization. I put 2 quarts of pellets into a .2 micron filter mycobag, then add 2 quarts of boiling water to the bag.
Use a plastic coffee container or other similar round item as a collar to hold the bag open or the steam closes it. Tie it shut with a piece of string,
and give it twenty or thirty minutes to expand the pellets. After the pellets have expanded, pick up the bags with oven mitts and give it
a good shake/massage to even the moisture from top to bottom.

Those are pond foggers in the tub, also from L owes. Perfect for humidifying a mushroom grow space because ultrasonic foggers also sterilize
your reservoir as they vibrate. Standing water breeds bacteria, so you have to keep your res sterile. That is an air filter mounted in a tote,
with an ultrasonic in the bottom tote. The air filter and ultrasonic were on a timer, the air filter provided positive pressure to provide humidified
fresh air every hour. Google "schmuvbox 2.0 hepa" for the air filter idea. Here are a few more pics of the fresh air exchange setup.

Wow! Thanks for the info.

I haven't moved in the myco world for quite a while, and it looks like some good progress has been made.

I was unaware of pond foggers, how long have those been around? What a great product.

The schmuvbox is a great idea also.

I need to go poke around at Topia a bit when I get a chance, I haven't looked around over there for years (before hippie passed away).

If you don't mind, a couple more questions:

On the shitake, are those clones in the pictures, or can you do multispore onto the popcorn and get those kind of results?

Is that compost horse manure/straw?

Thanks again, very inspiring!


Oh, and to at least attempt to stay OT on the compost question, I love all forms of decomposed/decpmposing organic materials, and make a hobby out of finding and collecting as varied and different types as I can. Nothing like it, period. Pure gold.

Hey,

What do you mix with the spent substrate to compost it?

To answer your question, my favourite compost would be one with high and balanced microbial diversity, preferably having rock dusts as one of the "ingredients".
If thermophilic then at least have a decent C:N ratio, following a method such as CMC as a bonus.
Both thermophilic and EWC have their avantages imo. I'd rather use both than pick a favourite.
By the way spent substrate isn't compost. It truly becomes compost after actually having gone through the process of composting, as one of the ingredients. Can't imagine premium compost using only spent mushroom substrate.

This thread is 95% mushroom related and maybe 5% cannabis/plant related but nice mushrooms nonetheless.. What about some pictures of your cannabis grow room?

C-C

Not quite sure how long pond foggers have been around. It is just an ultrasonic repackaged.

That shittake is from sporeworks, I would assume that it is a clone or isolate. I haven't ever done a multispore run of edibles
because it is easy to get active cultures.

The compost I was talking about using for growing cubensis in the original post was just plain ol' bagged compost from any big
box store/nursery supply. I did compost straw/hpoo once, but freshly gathered horse poo from the field worked much better than
the composted stuff IME.

Carbon.Chains said:

Hey,

What do you mix with the spent substrate to compost it?

To answer your question, my favourite compost would be one with high and balanced microbial diversity, preferably having rock dusts as one of the "ingredients".
If thermophilic then at least have a decent C:N ratio, following a method such as CMC as a bonus.
Both thermophilic and EWC have their avantages imo. I'd rather use both than pick a favourite.
By the way spent substrate isn't compost. It truly becomes compost after actually having gone through the process of composting, as one of the ingredients. Can't imagine premium compost using only spent mushroom substrate.

This thread is 95% mushroom related and maybe 5% cannabis/plant related but nice mushrooms nonetheless.. What about some pictures of your cannabis grow room?

C-C

Click to expand...

This thread could probably use some clarification also-
I am talking about pre-mixing compost. Post mixing compost would be after you mix in your peat,
amendments, minerals, aeration, etc. Pre-mixing is the 1/3 fraction of the base mix in a recipe like vonforne's
in the sticky "Natural Living Soil and No-Till for Beginners" thread in this subforum.

If you can't imagine premium compost using only spent mushroom substrate, then you haven't made any.
One of the USDA organic farms I supplied with mushroom substrates said that they made a minimal profit on the
mushrooms themselves, but that the compost was what really made the purchase worth it. They got 100 2 gallon
substrates a week, and had quite a compost pile. They refused to use manures because of the strenuous restrictions
put on manure composting procedures by the USDA. That job was a PITA, having to source USDA organic grains (at
a reasonable price) on that scale was terrible...

I don't mix anything with my spent substrates to compost them. The mushroom tissue has a high protein content
(which equates to N content) and has grain, which is used to introduce the mushroom culture to its fruiting
substrate. I just beat the spent substrates with a hammer to break 'em up, then toss 'em in a tub for a month or
so, checking on it every couple days to make sure that the material is composting, not re-colonizing. When you
get a well made mushroom compost, you can take a piece of the woody material you used to make it and
crumble it like a clump of worm castings. FFOF uses composted forest products, but they are still pretty woody
and don't break apart nearly as easily.

The thread is mushroom related so far, and that's ok by me. It is likely that there are not many folks
who have grown mushrooms on a scale where they could provide themselves with a substantial amount
of myco-compost and draw an opinion about it.

Feel free to add to the thread your opinion on your favorite compost(s). Recipes are always nice!

Here's a picture for ya, but couldn't you just click someone's avatar and then look through their threads?
These plants have leaf compost as the fraction of the substrate that was composted pre-mixing.

indianajones said:

This thread could probably use some clarification also-
I am talking about pre-mixing compost. Post mixing compost would be after you mix in your peat,
amendments, minerals, aeration, etc. Pre-mixing is the 1/3 fraction of the base mix in a recipe like vonforne's
in the sticky "Natural Living Soil and No-Till for Beginners" thread in this subforum.

Don't worry I got that. I should have said "spent mushroom substrate" instead of simply "spent substrate", as it evidently led to confusion. If it is the rest of my post that you misunderstood, adding rock dusts is beneficial to compost making. Here's more info on the kind of compost I was talking about:
www.ibiblio.org/steved/Luebke/Luebke-compost2.html


If you can't imagine premium compost using only spent mushroom substrate, then you haven't made any.

I based my argument on the experience of others and the fact that CMC for example would be utterly useless if one would make a compost of the same quality using only spent mushroom substrate. These composting techniques have been proven to be effective in making high quality compost.
What is your reasoning behind not mixing the mushroom substrate with other things and considering it superior?

I don't mix anything with my spent substrates to compost them. The mushroom tissue has a high protein content
(which equates to N content) and has grain, which is used to introduce the mushroom culture to its fruiting
substrate.

You mean mycelium by mushroom tissue?

I just beat the spent substrates with a hammer to break 'em up, then toss 'em in a tub for a month or
so, checking on it every couple days to make sure that the material is composting, not re-colonizing. When you
get a well made mushroom compost, you can take a piece of the woody material you used to make it and
crumble it like a clump of worm castings. FFOF uses composted forest products, but they are still pretty woody
and don't break apart nearly as easily.

I see, screened leafmold would probably have the same benefits as the FFOF composted forest products and would be able to break apart easily.

The thread is mushroom related so far, and that's ok by me. It is likely that there are not many folks
who have grown mushrooms on a scale where they could provide themselves with a substantial amount
of myco-compost and draw an opinion about it.

I understand your view but as this is a cannabis forum I feel it may be the inadequate website to post information so focused on mushrooms. Maybe it's just my opinion.


Here's a picture for ya, but couldn't you just click someone's avatar and then look through their threads?

These plants have leaf compost as the fraction of the substrate that was composted pre-mixing.


Misunderstood that part twice actually... I haven't slept in a few days...
Anyway the reason I was asking specifically for your pictures was more because of the 1.5g/w yield you claim and because I was curious of how a plant would look using mushroom compost only (as in, no other kind of compost).

Click to expand...

I've answered in the quote, in bold.

I edited my post a lot as I realised I actually misunderstood a lot of your previous post. Sorry about that.

impressive set-up.... w/ realistic, and eatable results..... my kind of spot

Can I be honest? I'm skeeved out and impressed/inspired all at the same time! I really don't like fungus/molds.. Ever since I was a kid.. It was a bad day when I found the true origins of my, at the time, favorite salad dressing.

But really, awesome work and proper execution! Keep up with the pics

worm poo rules. I miss my wormbin an am piling up leaves to make a spot here for em. if you feed em a variety of inputs the resulting product kicks ass over anything else I have tried. and I have tried em all

I don't have a single favorite kind.

I like formulating the worm castings by feeding them LOTS of fruits (banana & orange peels.)

I have also started using the chicken manure from my 2 chickens. And I shifted their diet around to increase the P and K in their manure. e.g. feeding them fruit, like watermelon.

Composted guinea pig manure.

The NPK ratio of guinea pig guano is similar to rabbit guano,
and the ratio is 3.8 : 0.7 : 1.5. Basically you just need a
Phosphorous boost during flowering, but it is considered the
best available manure with rabbit guano being a close second.

There is a farm in Peru that harvests guinea pig guano and
uses it to grow their vegetables. They also sell a large
amount to industrial organic farms, and they store the
guinea pig guano underground where the methane is
harvested to run the machines on the farm.

During certain festivals the guinea pigs are eaten

I would like to have an internship on the farm.

kind regards from guineapig