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The Corroboree

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Had a bit of a eureka moment on the weekend when doing some gardening. Hit upon the idea of using egg cartons as a means of creating, storing and transporting woodloving mycellium. The idea would be to create easily transportable blocks of mycellium that can then be used in a similar way to turfing a lawn with pregrown chunks of lawn grass. Bury three or four (or even one) of these colonised egg cartons in a mulch bed and you'd be well on your way to establishing a power patch.

Note: This is a trial. Stay with me as I update with progress.....

1. Soak some egg cartons in water. I happened to have an old styrofoam container that has collected rainwater and been used for transporting woodchips. Hence the water in the tub contains lots of small pieces of woodchip as well as a few thousand spores. I don't think this is crucial but it can't hurt overall.Step1.jpg

2. When the egg cartons are nice and soggy and soaked, take them out and sprinkle woodchips over them. Try and get a little bit of woodchips in the egg holes and pat them down nicely. If you have sawdust, I'm sure that would work just as good if not better.

Step2.jpg3. Sprinkle woodchips or substrate that have been colonised by woodloving mycellium over the top of the woodchips. The more the merrier but if you've only got a little bit, it can go a long way if used properly.

Step3.jpg

4. Put a fresh layer of uncolonised woodchips or substrate over the top and put another egg carton over that. Sit it aside in a nice shady space, preferably with woodchips underneath. Leave it alone and keep it damp.

Step4.jpg

In theory...the mycellium will spread across the woodchips and even into the egg carton. The spaces left for eggs in the carton will create nice air patches to prevent the mycellium from getting too wet and soggy. This is the problem I run into when working with straight cardboard colonisation. There's not enough air to get through the cardboard and things can get soggy and messy and the mycellium will stall. Overall you should easily be able to stack a dozen or so of these somewhere in your garden until they are fully colonised.

Step5.jpg

Once you have a fully colonised carton you can cart if off (no pun intended) to a nearby woodchip patch and bury it. You can plant the whole thing or take the top layer off and start a whole new one, as the top layer will have plenty of mycellium working through it.

Will keep you updated with my progress.

Edited by holymountain
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Interesting idea. It seems sound.

Looking forward to the updates :)

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Cool teck

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HM, how's the egg carton tek from last year looking now, some nearly 12 months on and with the season upon us?

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Once again...I had to move house! The amount of times this has happened is crazy. However, I do know the people who took my room. I have instructed them to contact me if they see anything suspicious in the backyard.

That said, still a little too early in the season for this location. Give it another month.

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maybe polish it up and enter in the tek comp

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