Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>]

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