I love finding mushrooms on my homestead. To me they are a sign that my soil is improving and my plants will be growing well. Plus, some of the mushrooms are very tasty!
I'm always adding mulch to my homestead (often wood chips) which provides the perfect environment for fungi. Without doing anything special to inoculate the mulch the fungi just show up and make themselves known by the mushrooms that pop up after a rainstorm.
Edible Mushrooms as a Bonus
One of the smaller morels that showed up
I'm not an expert in mushrooms so I won't try to list the edible ones that might show up in your mulch. But I was lucky enough last year (and I hope this year!) to get some morels showing up! My wife and I harvested them and used them on homemade pizza.
Another edible mushroom that has shown up is turkey tail. While edible it is more used for medicinal purposes instead of being used as a food crop. It is supposed to help boost your immune system. I have been eating it on and off to hopefully help me avoid getting a cold or flue.
Both of these mushrooms just showed up on their own. The turkey tail was actually not in the mulch but growing on logs and stumps that I added to my homestead.
The more I mimic a forest the more I seem to get for free!
Benefits to the Homestead
Turkey tail mushroom growing on a log that I stuck in the ground at my homestead
Fungi help breakdown wood chips and other plant material that falls to the ground. This builds soil and also feeds your plants and soil life.
But fungi do more than just that.
Some fungi connect to the roots of plants and even interconnect plants to each other. This results in what is sometimes called the Wood Wide Web.
Through this web nutrients and water are shared between plants. Even more amazing is that the plants can warn each other about threats through this web.
The fungi in the soil also help protect plants from fungi that would damage or kill the plants.
All in all fungi are an amazing partner for any homesteader... assuming you create a welcoming habitat for them!
Putting mulch down on your homestead is a great first step--you can learn more about how to do that on this week's blog post on my blog Wild Homesteading.
If you want to learn more about fungi and how they can benefit your plants check out this awesome video:
Thank you all and I hope you found this post useful. If you liked it please upvote it and leave a comment with your thoughts on fungi on the homestead.