Space Habitat Permaculture

The importance of fungi in the landscape

Regenerative agriculture are helping spread the f word. Here is a great infographic from 2020 about how fungi help living soils 💜🍄✅

This is the collab we didn't know we needed. A Bird's Nest Fungus on some wombat poo!

These fungi are from the Nidulariaceae family. They're named for their egg-like peridioles - or capsules that hold the spores - which sit in a "nest-like" cup. 🐣

The peridioles are tiny, flat and about 1mm in diameter. And they're found in a jelly-like substance within the cup when they're young and fresh.
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These spores also stick to anything it lands on, which is why they're on wombat poo! They then germinate and start their life cycle over again. 🍄

📸: Katrina Blake/Bush Heritage Australia in Taungurung country, Victoria.

A very simple explanation about genetic mutation in plants that turn out to be very popular!

Well there ya go...

Planting Trees in Square Holes Makes Them Grow Faster and Stronger Square holes encourage roots to spiral out into native soil, planting trials show It may seem counter intuitive, but round holes are not the best shape for planting trees. According to botanist James Wong, square holes encourage roots to “flare out” into native soil, while round holes encourage ...

“Soil health is all the rage these days, but we’re missing the fungi in that,” Furci tells Food Tank. “It’s very safe to say that without fungi there would be no soil.”

How Fungi Can Help Solve the Climate Crisis – Food Tank The Fungi Foundation looks at the important role fungi and mushrooms can play in fighting climate change and increasing biodiversity.

Some tickets left for my full day workshop on the Permaculture approach to fungi. It will be fun, info-rich day that includes a short foray around the farm, and practical exercises/experiments.

Gardens are not just for plants. Why not grow your own delicious mushrooms? Come along on Saturday and learn how.

Bookings here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/a-permaculture-approach-to-fungi-tickets-153426451647?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

"Massospora, a species completely unrelated to Ophiocordyceps, infects cicadas: it rots away the abdomen of an infected insect, leaving it tipped with a yellowish plug of spores that looks like a mass of pollen. Infected cicadas are not incapacitated or ill: in fact they become ‘hyperactive and hypersexual despite the fact that their ge****ls have long since crumbled away’. Rushing between mates, they become ‘flying salt-shakers of death’, dusting other cicadas with Massospora’s spores."

Too many great paragraphs in this. Read it all!

Francis Gooding · From Its Myriad Tips: Mushroom Brain · LRB 20 May 2021 Fungi are diffuse, plastic beings: they reform themselves around the problem at hand. ‘Mycelium’, says Merlin...

https://rdcu.be/ckFov

Take the time to read this well written white paper.

"Growing a circular economy with fungal biotechnology"

Growing a circular economy with fungal biotechnology: a white paper Fungi have the ability to transform organic materials into a rich and diverse set of useful products and provide distinct opportunities for tackling the urgent challenges before all humans. Fungal biotechnology can advance the transition from our petroleum-based economy into a bio-based circular eco...

Don't believe the hype...
It is quite clear that fungi would not be growing on Mars, where extreme radiation, temperature swings, and very low air pressure combine to create a very unlivable existence.

Experts Shred Paper Claiming to Identify Mushrooms on Mars "This paper, which is really not credible, will be ignored by the scientific community."

Playing with cultures.
Added to my culture bank are store-bought Shiitake, Cordyceps, wild foraged Almond Agaricus.

Also some bucket tek, using hydrated lime pasteurised straw with Pleurotus ostreatus spawn from Urban Spore.