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| Fungi in my garden. |
Over the last year, I have experimented with gardening and permaculture. I chose a small area of land on our five acres because I did not want to be in over my head. I installed a drip irrigation system with a 5 gallon bucket, fenced it neatly, loaded it with horse manure and began planting. To my delight, mushrooms started popping up. I was always told that was a sign of good soil and air. My dad used to say this and he knows how to garden! While reading for class this week, I was reminded of a process I witnessed this past summer here in South Florida. We let the chickens range and they wandered the garden and ate some tomatoes, okay, okay...a lot of tomatoes! A few weeks later I noticed that tomato plants were popping up in the yard, more than an acre away from the garden. While scratching my head, I realized, I had the chickens to thank!
Now on to this weeks readings and you will see how they relate to my experimental garden last summer...
According to Crosby, mushrooms can help clean up our mess on
this planet in three ways.
They
can break down microbes and chemicals to harmless forms and they can render
heavy metals immobile because of their root systems. Fungi press enzymes that
can breakdown hazardous molecules into carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
The dense root part of the fungi can
capture and hold dangerous heavy metals that cannot breakdown (Crosby, 2017).
That is pretty amazing.
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| Baby Jackfruit tree and mushrooms in my garden. |
In Calamur's experiment, the hazardous chemicals in
batteries were put in a bin with sawdust and fungi (Pleurotus ostreatus spores)
and compared to a control group.
The fungi did have an effect on the chemicals as shown by an outcome of
lowering the pH of the trial bin.
This is significant because there is hope that these spores could be
used to make batteries harmless to people and the environment after their use.
Currently, batteries leak potassium
hydroxide, which is highly toxic to people and animals and it finds its way
into water supplies.
There is a
need for people to correctly dispose of batteries, but there is no real "green"
way to use and dispose of batteries.
California has made it illegal to dispose of batteries in the trash
(Calamur, n.d.).
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| Foraging chickens on our farm. |
In my own life, I have never thought to much about
batteries. I do love mushrooms though and find them fascinating.
On my farm and in my garden, they pop
up in the finest soil.
I often
take a picture and try to identify them (and have yet to find an edible one,
but that's another story). Stamets' YouTube video is a short story about the
magic of mushrooms to breakdown petroleum-based hydrocarbons.
The best part was not only that the
mushroom grew huge, but also they started a whole life cycle back to nature
that would have not occurred without them. After a few weeks the oyster
mushrooms died and rotted, they grew spores, flies came and then maggots, birds
ate the maggots and let seeds they had eaten in their waste.
The seeds grew and there were plants
growing in what was once hazardous chemical waste (Stamets, 2017)!
I am always amazed at the human power
to interfere with Nature and Nature's power to evolve back to perfection.
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| Surprise tomato plants! Thank you chickens. |
Works Cited:
Calamur, S. (n.d.) Mycoremediation of Household Hazardous
Waste through Pleurotus ostreatus. Retrieved on November 15, 2018 from
https://clu-in.org/download/studentpapers/Fungal-Bioremediation-of-Household-Hazardous-Waste.pdf
Crosby, W. (2017). Mycoremediation – Using Mushrooms To
Clean up Toxic Waste in Our Environment. FungiAlly. Retrieved on November 15,
2018 from
http://fungially.com/mycoremediation-using-mushrooms-clean-toxic-waste-environment/
Stamets, P. (2017). Bioremediation with Fungi. Retreived on
November 15, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=239&v=BelfLIJErek
