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Fungi Gardening: Why are saprophytic mushrooms more common?


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I've just recently learned about the benefits on using mycorrhizae for gardening, and was wondering why most people typically grow saprophytic fungi with their plants (wine caps) as opposed to mycorrhizal. Wouldn't it be more intuitive to grow some endo-mycorrhizal mushrooms which also fruit themselves?


Wine Cap - (Stropharia rugoso-annulata) Sawdust Spawn ...

(Example of the saprophytic mushroom, the wine cap, typically used for gardening.)

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The main reason is that mycorrhizal fungi are much more difficult to grow than saprophytic mushrooms.  People have been trying to grow the mycorrhizal fungi for years with very little success.  You can find spawn for them advertised on the Web, but I haven't heard of anyone's growing them in any quantity.

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The substrate/nutrient base for saprophytes is easy to identify and set up. Examples: Deciduous wood chips for Wine Caps. Aspen for Oysters. Oak for Shiitake....They are easy to inoculate with spawn.

It is difficult to get spawn onto established tree roots.

All my attempts to bring Chanterelles and boletes to the Aspen Spruce bush lot behind my backyard have failed.

There is a Garden Nursery website in Oregon claiming to sell a species of Oak for transplanting that is spawned with truffles. I would try it except the tree is rated for agricultural zone 8 and I live in 3B

There is another in Ontario claiming to have truffle inoculated Hazel trees...again I live too far north.

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