fungus amongus
May. 12th, 2006 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonC ripped the carpet out of the master bathroom, and the commode seems to have been leaking both from the tank (fresh water), and around the wax seal (not at all fresh water). Serious yuck. Besides the effluvia smell, the water soaked into the subfloor and the floor moulding, and, speaking of molding...there were nasty patches of black mold under the carpet, our own little piece of New Orleans (sorry, Loki and Alobar, couldn't resist). The carpet is gone, bleach has been liberally applied, good strong cleansing incense has been burned, and now I'll pull out the commode and fix it, and rip out and replace the subfloor where it got wet. I am having unkind thoughts about the prior owners of the Casa for putting carpet in there in the first place. I'd planned to replace it at some point, this just bumped it up to the top of the list rather suddenly...
The upside is that this will give me the chance to put in radiant floor heating before C lays the ceramic floor tile, so our new floor will be toasty warm, as well as fungus-free ;>
But not all things mycological are bad...I found a couple of very cool products today that are now on their way. The first are wooden plugs saturated with the spores of ten different gourmet and medicinal mushrooms: The Ice Man Fungus, Artist Conk, Reishi, The Oregon Polypore, Maitake, The Conifer Coral, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Pearl and Phoenix Oyster, Chicken of the Woods and Turkey Tail. When I cut a tree, all I'll have to do is bore some holes in the top of the stump and insert the plugs, and instant growing medium, as well as slowly breaking down the stump without having to rent a stump grinder or go through one of the other labor-intensive and/or dangerous (i.e., dynamite) ways to clear out stumps. The same place also has the most wonderful stuff...MycoSpored oils, which can be cut with canola oil and used as chainsaw bar oil, instead of using petro-products. So you can lubricate the saw using natural oils, and as you cut, the cut wood and stumps are infused with spores of either Pearl Oyster or Shiitake mushrooms. How wicked cool is that? Besides the mushrooms being much-appreciated around the Casa, gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are some of the more eco-friendly products one can grow in woodlands, without needing to clear the land for more traditional crops. I am officially a happy boy.
The upside is that this will give me the chance to put in radiant floor heating before C lays the ceramic floor tile, so our new floor will be toasty warm, as well as fungus-free ;>
But not all things mycological are bad...I found a couple of very cool products today that are now on their way. The first are wooden plugs saturated with the spores of ten different gourmet and medicinal mushrooms: The Ice Man Fungus, Artist Conk, Reishi, The Oregon Polypore, Maitake, The Conifer Coral, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Pearl and Phoenix Oyster, Chicken of the Woods and Turkey Tail. When I cut a tree, all I'll have to do is bore some holes in the top of the stump and insert the plugs, and instant growing medium, as well as slowly breaking down the stump without having to rent a stump grinder or go through one of the other labor-intensive and/or dangerous (i.e., dynamite) ways to clear out stumps. The same place also has the most wonderful stuff...MycoSpored oils, which can be cut with canola oil and used as chainsaw bar oil, instead of using petro-products. So you can lubricate the saw using natural oils, and as you cut, the cut wood and stumps are infused with spores of either Pearl Oyster or Shiitake mushrooms. How wicked cool is that? Besides the mushrooms being much-appreciated around the Casa, gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are some of the more eco-friendly products one can grow in woodlands, without needing to clear the land for more traditional crops. I am officially a happy boy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth....
Date: 2006-05-12 09:01 pm (UTC)I wonder if they do the chainsaw oil over here and if so whether I can sell my dad on it?
Is your chicken-of-the-woods the same as our chicken-of-the-woods?
Re: What fungi sprout in Yuggoth....
Date: 2006-05-12 09:42 pm (UTC)I think it is the same stuff, or if not, a very closely-related species... One of my favorite mycologically-inclined Reclaiming peeps, Larry Savides, will be over here next week, so I'll have to ask him and see if he knows. I'm hoping the spore-stuff will arrive by then, so I can show him when he's here.
I suspect that if you can get them to ship to the U.K. (I wonder about agricultural laws), you could certainly get canola oil over there and mix up your own stuff. I'm wondering if using the canola oil instead of commercial bar&chain oil could void my Husqvarna warranty, but I'd probably still go ahead and do it, even if so.
And yeah, stump grinding sucks. For smaller trees, I can break up the roots with my backhoe and pull them out, but that's not going to fly for the big 'uns It's not like I'm taking out many trees anyway, if I can help it, but I do need to clear the trails at times, chop dead trees for firewood, and clear some gardening/crop space next to the house.