Rewilding My Lot

The Central Texas Mycological Society is a group dedicated to working with fungi, which are so important for the health, stability, and abundance of soil, plants, and fresh water.

One of the things that this group does is to divert used compost blocks from mushroom farmers into the community so that people can grow their own culinary mushrooms or build fungal-rich soil in their own gardens. If you live in the central Texas area, there are pick-up points where you can get mushroom blocks at no charge.

I don’t want to grow culinary mushrooms here, but I definitely want to improve the health of the soil, which as a new developer lot two years ago was very poor quality.

On a recent day when I was volunteering at the Headwaters at the Comal, I was gifted an excess mushroom block that they had obtained from the Central Texas Mycological Society. So I brought it home and added it to my composter. By the looks of what was growing in it, this particular block had been used to propagate Blue Oyster Mushrooms.

The mushroom blocks are indeed blocks, but they break apart and crumble easily. I believe that they are made of sawdust, grains, and other organic matter, and of course they contain fungal tissue as well.