DWOM

Do you know much about the manufacturing/prefab process? What kind of accuracy is required? Do the panels require manufacturing at one of the Brettstaple plants using the future, or can they be constructed locally with small scale machinery and a little ingenuity? And if so, are there any examples of this in the UK. Question, questions! Have lots of spruce coming of age, but it's very expensive for us to move in about from where we are remote NW scotland. Cheers.

I'm not talking about anybody's intelligence. As I've said, I'm talking about ingrained destructive behaviour being passed down through the generations. Someone above mentioned the church, well............

Poor old moths ey. Intensive ag and the plough are part of the problem. I would have thought considering thr forum we are on, there might be a few ideas on a more suitable approach. Come on guys, I'm giving you the clues, but the responses so far tell me that I am dealing with the same old fingers in the ears, ingrained historical precedence that I have to deal with daily. Shame, but like I said earlier, enjoy your whizz bang pop!

They're doing us a good service pulling oil seed rape out of the ground! See, it's all about perspective, and if it's is skewed from the start, it can be an uphill battle.

All I'm saying is that, with the dulcet tones ringing throughout the countryside at this time of year. It makes sense to ponder how we got here and where we are going. All that's left are the scraps, our fore bearers have seen to that by triggering the largest extinction event the earth has seen as we moved out of Africa and around the globe. Things did not get better with the advent of the gun. When Europeans first brought guns to the Americas, flocks of passenger pigeons could be seen that were so large they would take 14hrs to pass by. It wasn't long before it was extinct, hunting and habitat loss. That is just one of thousands of examples of why there is a better way to manage land/food than in the wild with a gun. It is an image that will haunt me till I die. What if? I think that we should let our obscurely perceived dominance and superiority slip away and let some of the natural systems that evolved long before us take the strain. At the mo we farm fields without animals and rear animals without grass, that's why the supermarket trough is so poor, without that well reared deep flavour. And wild biodiversity is the keystone to it all. The gun has no place in that anymore, or at least, in the long term it hasn't. We are not the only apex predator, there is a web of life out there waiting to be exploited by our so called massive brains.

'tis the season to ponder ingrained behaviour and our complete inability to drag ourselves out of the dark ages of land management. Enjoy your whizz, pop, bang boys. It's time for the adults to have a go.....

When the ground thaws I will be trying to try and establish some succession beds at home. Pleurotus > Agaricus > Veg. This is mainly to experiment with forming soil and the outputs that can be achieved hijacking this process. By adding substrate and mulch (cut and drop), hoping to eventually provide an environment suitable for the tertiary decomposers to thrive in. I will be using an overstory of coppice Hazel and ash for many reasons, but mainly to see if I can abuse morels into fruiting for a spring crop. Just to note and I expect you're already aware that there are likely better ways to guarantee inoculation on trees and stumps than chainsaw oil. As an example, in my eyes, it may be worth taking shavings from the tree to be inoculated at an earlier date, building mycelium on those shavings and then reintroducing the colonised tree back to itself, particularly with the Laetiporus, hericiums or something like Grifola.

It smacks of bad advice to me. His books read and portray him as you say, a man who is working with a purpose. It kind of betrayed his writing, so it's nice to hear that he doesn't really play those games. Did you go any further with the chain oil. With a good base oil and some additives, sugars, vits, it could easily be viable, and not that much of a clat for any arb with the inclination to make up themselves. Were you thinking a mass of spores or shredded mycelium. Only problem I can see with live culture is the filter and it either obliterating the mycelium and knocking it back so hard that less desirables take over, or just blocking it. Maybe a modified filter, for inoculation. I think he also recommends a similar process for chippers! My own personal opinion is that association is likely to best occur via live culture inoculation, just like when growing oysters say, the best springboard for colonisation and beating contaminants is dispersed mycelium that has grown on something nutritious. If the myc takes and fruiting occurs and if a native strain was used, then sporulation and away. If it doesn't take, it wasn't right for the situation. I think were are talking about trees and succession here (veteranisation if you like), rather than forest and soil restoration, I think that the latter will take a different tac. It seems like childs play, when you sit and think for a second, what can we really do. Nature is going to laugh us out of the ring, but we have to start somewhere and it seems that this is the start. Like you said, there are some pioneers out there that have worked so hard to bring us here, the potential is only just being realised and it's only because of them, that we are even here talking about it.

I love Stamets books, He maybe over eggs it a little sometimes, but he's very inspirational and accessible. Not sure I'm on board with all the trademarking and patent shenanigans, but that just seems to be something that is prevalent throughout the commercial fungi world (and they do things a bit differently over the water). I think people who know a little about it, see the potential, want to protect their interests and further their position, just like they've been taught to do all their lives by this strange world of ours I think you're right, it's up to us as custodians to take some charge. This is happening in a lot of areas. Big business and the corporate world, buying vast tracts of land, shrinking gene pools and patenting the natural in the name of profit, while the home cultivator/collector/breeder stands alone, together with the last remaining vibrancy. Do you know of anyone doing this in the UK? Other than for microscopy, I have struggled to find anybody building mycelium and storing plates. I am almost sure that there isn't anybody working towards the kind of regenerative nursery or re-seeding that I can envisage. Like you say, it's certainly not the best plan, but it seems to be the only one.

We can grow all of the species mentioned in this thread at home with little effort. Being tree peeps it is easy to get hold of substrate and the spawn is readily available. Chicken and hen of the woods in particular make a great feature if a customer is happy for a stump to be left standing. May take a year or two to fruit depending on inoculation technique and other variables, but they can get some great tasty fruit bodies for years to come, sometimes twice a year. In fact I think primary decomposers are and excellent option for onsite composting of tree waste, adding value and kickstarting good soil for all. Just got to start persuading the masses that piles wood can equate to food, medicine and general good health and well-being. Just as a side note, if collecting in the wild for use at home, be aware of the capacity in fruits and brackets to hyper accumulate some pretty toxic stuff, mainly heavy metals. Choose your site wisely.

So worth it then I don't think it is really relevant if it's seen in our lifetime or not. I'm talking about regeneration of a degraded environments and how we go about it. We don't do very well at the mo and we need to start doing well, very well, very soon. I don't expect that we have the expanse of time required for the kind of natural regeneration that would mitigate our disastrous practices. If we create from below the ground up, instead of imposition, then maybe we would not see the problems we encounter with current practices. I feel like I've been pondering this for a good while. I've got some good ideas on how to go about re-building impoverished land and degraded eco-systems, the pinnacle of these is the forest, rhizosphere and up! There doesn't seem to be the same kind of collection and culture re. soil life, that there is with plant life (I may not be looking in the right place), particularly in the uk. Even if you are growing saprophytes, you cannot purchase or obtain natively cloned strains or spores, without first finding and then isolating a strain from all the wild 'contaminants' yourself. This incidentally, would play a part in cataloguing woodland micro life. If it's not there to experiment with, then no experimentation takes place, except in the upper echelons. Germinating spores, building mycelium, culturing bacteria are not rocket science, anyone can do this. I imagine that the genotype and potential phenotypic expression of a UK species varies to that of say a European or American species. I am going to begin a program collecting spores and cultured, cloned mycelium. My wish at this stage of my life, is that I had been doing this for as long as I've been thinking about it.

And I certainly don't claim to have even the smallest grasp on the complexity. I do know that almost all of the practical work that is being done, is done with gourmet mushrooms and $$$$ as the main aim (chanterelle matsutake etc...). In as short a time as possible. This makes absolutely no sense to me and smacks of intensive monoculture with a twist, it may show small success in the short term, but is destined to fail. We are beginning to understand that permanent agriculture i.e. perennial forest systems are the only way that we can guarantee food and biosphere security. I am trying to establish what is being done, or what could be done about the soil food web and associated life. I am genuinely as interested in species that will kill me as I am about those that will feed me because I understand that one can't exist without the other. I asked this before, but I'll throw it in again. In your honest opinion is the only realistic option for regeneration, to use existing sites as the seat of expansion, mush like native pine regeneration?

I understand what you are saying Fungus. I have read your posts in this thread and others, and I can assure you that I'm not coming at this from a commercial angle, nor am I interested in the pursuit of wealth at all. In fact I would go so far as to say that the success of something like this, lies with the exact opposite. I don't expect to see much of what I want to create in my lifetime, but it would be nice to pass on improved soil, increased biomass and diversity rather than accumulated paper wealth to the earth and my family. Even on the tiny scale that I can muster. If 100yrs down the line something that I did comes to fruition of finally has a purpose, I see that as a result. This is how I see it. I am an tree man at heart and forest eco-systems are where my real interest lies. Not just the wild primary systems, but utilised and locally managed for food, fuel, medicine and product. Sustainability has been bastardised, only sun cycles and the systems that operate to this rhythm can be sustainable.

I also think that soil and the life it holds is the key to this, mainly because relatively so little is known. I also think that this is the main reason we see natural forces being the only valid option. Experimentation and work is needed so good luck! When you talk about translocation does that concept include the trees being planted at the original site to build associations before being transplanted at the new site. I have seen an old permacuture video that showed a sheep farmer in NZ 're-seeding' impoverished grassland with fertile cubes of soil worms and all, spaced at a pre-determined distance from each other. They were harvested from his remaining rich pasture land, which quickly recovered. Within a year the lifeless soil was visibly busy with life, worms and the like. So maybe possible with woodland soils????