Combining Crops: Mushrooms and Carrots

July 5, 2023

Combining Crops: Mushrooms and Carrots

Last year I decided to try stacking crops, and inoculated a wood chip path in-between two beds of kale with Wine Cap mushrooms, or Stropharia rugosoannulata.

Mostly the trial was to see if/how they would overwinter, and overwinter they did. This week we’ve decided to dig out a carrot bed we seeded in last year’s kale beds that we’ve lost a weed battle with. Surprise! The Wine Cap mycelium is spreading through a layer of mulch.

(The layer of white stuff is all wine cap mushroom mycelium)

In our monoculture chemical agriculture, how many opportunities are we missing at the expense of convenience and convention?

When we see that things are not in competition and see instead combinations and collaborations, we can create more life and more abundance in a small space.

Agriculture is not either/or.

Agriculture can be yes, and.

Graham

Ecology, The Farm

ecological farming, Ecology, mulch, regenerative agriculture

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Graham Hnatiuk

Ecologist-farmer from Canada. Born at 350ppm.

2 responses to “Combining Crops: Mushrooms and Carrots”

Anessa Maize

July 8, 2023 at 9:10 am

I just watched the first half of Fantastic Fungi last evening so your post today is “spore on” (=spot on 😊) for me. What an amazing life form the fungi are and the earth we live on/with. Love your experimentation. I’ve used wood chips on all my no till garden and orchard areas and the mycelium growth is profound. One experiment I did in a small section of my orchard where I plan to have bees was to use some heavy landscape fabric I had leftover (from a pond bank reinforcement effort and no I didn’t use it on my no till areas, only cardboard) and this spring I removed and replaced with cardboard and more chips and I found a huge network of mycelium underneath a section near an old tree stump! Even under the fabric they thrive!

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Graham Hnatiuk

July 10, 2023 at 11:59 am

That’s great to hear! Observing mycelium is really special. In another trial, I tried inoculating a straw pile in a forest, and this year, we have watched the mycelium spread out from the original site into the leaf litter on the forest floor and watched Wine Caps pop up a metre away from the inoculation site. Truly amazing creatures.

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About Graham

Graham is an ecologist-farmer from Canada working on educating about the wonders and beauty of the natural world, and how we can design biodiverse food production systems.

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