Comments on: Worm Bin Mushrooms

By: James Astor

James Astor — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:51:17 +0000

After reading the comments on this article, the concepts described above are very interesting. Daniel, I too would love to see/talk more about your experiments. I’d love to hear from you, my e-mail is: astor (dot) james (at) gmail (dot) com

By: Daniel Herrington

Daniel Herrington — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:32:40 +0000

Kenny,
My apologies, I received the email in my Inbox and thought it was from Bentley. I have not way of forwarding my message to you. I have asked Bentley too and hopefully he is checking his email and will do so.

Again sorry for the confusion. I only hope Bentley gets it to you quickly which I am sure he will. To write it here would be a long long message.

By: Daniel Herrington

Daniel Herrington — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:26:49 +0000

Bentley, I have sent you and email with opinions and data on what was done during the experiments. I trust you are still at the email address I have for you when you first began. If not. Please email me back and I will resend my data. You may wish to edit it if you want to post it as it is rather long.
Thanks.

By: Kenny Rupert

Kenny Rupert — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:48:16 +0000

This goes out to Daniel Herrington. If you get this I would love to hear/read any info you have on your experiments. I’ve read all of Stamets works and know a decent amount on the subject, but always trying to learn more, especially if it pertains to vermiculture as well. I can be reached at my first then last name(no space) at hotmail. Thanks.

By: Chris C

Chris C — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:11:50 +0000

I’m not really sure. I’ve never really gone for ultimate efficiency with my worms. They seem to do pretty well with my attitude of benign neglect.

But like I said above I think worms and mushrooms make a great team for breaking down volume materials. Aside from the efficiency there is a huge upside in that you could produce a bunch of food before sending the remaining substrate to the worms. Growing mushrooms takes some labor but I could see it easily being incorporated into a worm business.

For instance if one lived in an urban/suburban area with lots of coffee shops you could hit all of them for free coffee grounds, grow a ton of mushrooms off them for eating/selling and then take the spent substrate and feed it to the worms. The mushrooms break down the grounds somewhat and probably mellow out the PH for the worms.

Neither worms nor mushrooms are a business for me and I don’t quite have the room to go large scale with it. But I do like making good use of others’ waste.

By: Cianoy

Cianoy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:03:31 +0000

In a lot of materials I read for commercial worm cultivation, they suggest anaerobic decomposition of about two weeks before using the material as feedstock. I am wondering if it would be more efficient to introduce mushrooms instead as a pre-composting method.

By: Chris C

Chris C — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:28:38 +0000

Mushrooms definitely are great decomposers. I’ve had great luck using them with worms (just not simultaneously since they compete). For instance I filled a big old trunk from the thrift store with coffee grounds (lots of coffee grounds) and mixed in oyster mushroom spawn. For the next few months I harvested probably 20lbs of oyster mushrooms from it. Then once the oysters ran out of steam I dumped a bunch of worms in there. Now they’re loving it. And it’s the lightest fluffiest soil I’ve ever seen (it’s definitely not coffee grounds anymore).

Certain species of oyster are tolerant to low temps (at least as low as we get here in CA). I’ve got some pleurotus columbinus (blue oyster) growing out on spawn and I plan to grow it during the winter. However neither oyster nor shiitake are wild about cardboard in my experience. Reishi mushrooms on the other hand go crazy for the stuff. Overall mushrooms + worms can break down a ton of organic waste.

By: Daniel Herrington

Daniel Herrington — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:07:04 +0000

Yes it does, it works well with the worms. I conductected experiments with Western University in Canada to this extent. We followed the blueprint of a Mycobiologist named Paul Stamet. You can see his vids on http://www.TED.org. He also has books published that touch on this. But essentially to give an idea. We digested 27 pounds of newspaper in 30 days using Shitake and Oyster mushrooms. Naturally it was a controlled experiment.

Collectively the process is 18% faster but is only good in the summer months. once the mycelium from the spores spread they will actually break down the vegetable oil and hydrocarbons in paper faster than the worms.

However, out attempts to get the government to recognize this advantage fell on deaf ears. So I do it for my own recreation with various universities interested in Fungi.

Hope that helps.

By: Cianoy

Cianoy — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:47:34 +0000

I’ve done a little research on it too. It seems mushrooms do help with the decomposition process. That said, yes, I’ve stopped decapitating them. In fact, I took one of the mushrooms including the growing medium (in this case, newspaper) and moved it to another bin. I’m hoping that bin will also get loads of mushrooms to help the worms in the decomposition process.

What I don’t like though is that touching or breaking the mushroom “head” stains you with black ink. It’s discoloring my worm bin. Tsk.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:13:07 +0000

I agree with Chris – there are LOADS of little mushrooms that look like that.

I suspect that you will see the mushrooms vanish pretty quickly without any decapitation necessary!