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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] plant buffers for pollution filtering?

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] plant buffers for pollution filtering?
  • Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:29:02 -0500

Paul Stamets proposes bioremediation filter strips using various mushroom species. A typical setup wd be to fill burlap bags w wood chips, inoculate with the mycelium, stack the inoculated bags like sandbags along a levee, and allow the mycelium to colonize all the chips in the "dyke" you've created. When pollution-y runoff (whether chemical plant or giant feedlot etc.) hits the dike, it is absorbed and the mycelium "eats" the contents, breaking down chemical compounds into harmless components, neutralizing pathogens, incorporating elements like N and P that otherwise would pollute water systems. And over time becoming soil.

See Stamets' latest book MYCELIUM RUNNING, an essential text on the subject of achieving numerous goals with fungi, which could have many homestead applications.

~Harvey in northern VA
www.themodernhomestead.us

One of my paddocks runs along a road that gets truck traffic to & from a gravel pit. There is a shallow grassy "ditch" next to the road, then it rises a bit to the salmonberry brush patch in that paddock. Nettles grow there, and there used to be locust trees trying to sprout, but we got rid of them. I am wondering if there is any kind of shrub or plant I can naturalize there that might help take up any pollutants from the traffic so the critters won't be exposed as much when they graze there. I'm sure the ditch helps some, but the less leaching over, the better.

--Joanna





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