However! If I someday have a home in a mountain forest (as I often fantasize), I would definitely try to cultivate multiple mushrooms in various contexts, mostly in food production and soil improvement. Maybe some magic stuff, too? Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms ★ The Mushroom Cultivator ★ Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World ★ Mycelium Running ★ From Bears & Trees to Mushrooms & Bees ★ The overall impression and story that Stamets tells about fungi, mycelium and the role they have to play in the world.

The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”–the fruit of which are mushrooms–recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening). I”m pretty sure Stamets mentions somewhere in that book that decomposition by ’shrooms releases much of the involved biological carbon as gas, primarily as carbon dioxide. I don’t recall any mention of better mechanisms, though. The gist, as I recall it, is that this is the natural way of recycling nutrients to create healthy soil, with the implication that it’s good, and the best we can hope for.More support for determining what mushrooms are native to your area or could be cultivated outdoors in your climate--maybe a world map with annotations? This is a concern for those of us in the arid southwest with less organic content in soils, bacteria-dominant carbon cycles, and not much of a cold season. Today, there wasn't much moist; rain has been absent for days; so, new mushrooms aren't that abundant, but many decomposing. I wonder about their short life. Stamets believes they have a good impact on the soil. His "mycorestoration" is a good idea. Mycoforestry and mycogardening: the use of mycelium for companion cultivation for the benefit and protection of plants. The first half of the book also left me curious about patent law as it applies to living organisms and how Stamets and others operate in this space. Stamets makes you daydream about the endless possibilities that the fungal world offers even while reading a book that is closer to being a textbook than a novel.

How valid some of these frustrations are definitely depend on the idea of where legitimate knowledge comes from. Does the only source of truth come from peer-reviewed journals and establishment sources, or are there equally valid forms of knowledge creation that run in parallel with the scientific establishment? Notwithstanding that it's not a simple binary, I found there was often not enough substance to validate some of Stamets' bolder claims, even though I think pretty much everything he's doing should be more heavily researched and tested (and I think in the years since first publication, there's been some vindication of his initial ideas and experiments). I forgot I was on a waiting list for almost a year to receive this one from the library, unfortunately my interest in fungi and mushrooms has somewhat waned since reading a similar book last year. Starhawk (2006). "Notes from Underground – Book review: Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World". Yes!. Positive Futures Network (38). ISSN 1089-6651. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 . Retrieved 1 January 2013.Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. Common newbie mistakes in propagation, particularly as many pasteurization techniques are cost prohibitive for a small scale runner. Stamets' detailed accounts of his own experiments and discoveries, and the broad possibilities these could create for the future of forestry, food and generally looking after the natural world. The first chapter almost made me quit reading, since the author is clearly a lunatic. However, we were slow enough at work that I was forced to give this another chance and the first half, excepting the intro, is quite fun to read. For anarchists and foresters alike. The second half is an encyclopeadic cookbook for "medicinal mushrooms" also quite skip-able. Although I do not agree 100% with some of his premises, his approach seems new and enriching to me.

This is the first book to give the Kingdom of the Fungi its proper place in the scheme of things. It is the most important book on nature that I’ve seen in years.” From a purely scientific perspective, I enjoyed what this book had to offer. From a literary perspective, however, I ran into some serious stylistic problems. This book, from my understanding, is scientific literature meant for the general public, to pique their interest in mycology and hopefully spur more dialogue about its importance. But such scientific literature has a threefold job - it has to be accessible, persuasive, and authoritative all at once. It can't bog down the reader with excess terminology, nor can it dumb things down too much or become overzealous; otherwise it loses credibility. I hate to say it, but Mycelium Running falls into the latter categories. The first 1/3 suffers from these common science-writing traps, while the rest read better though still with occasional flaws. Overall, this book could have been better written, edited, and organized. But to be fair I'll review it separately on what I did and didn't like.I was fairly disappointed in this book, given the amount of hype that surrounds it in some circles. A couple specific gripes: muddling hypothesis and proven facts/theories, making huge, sweeping statements without footnotes or references - ie, this mushroom might cure cancer... sure, it might , so might dancing the tango, but how likely is it - when there are references, they are to the author's own work or to incredibly small science-fair-esque experiments. Further, I was put off by the whoo-whoo "Gaia hypothesis" language and underlying thesis.

This book is definitely more complicated to understand (I'll reread it several times and I'm pretty sure I'll continue to discover fascinating things with each reading).

Success!

Prototaxites, a giant fungus dotting the landscapes of Earth and was the tallest organism on land 420 million years ago Mushrooms are in many ways the earths largest organism. They can spread a network of communicating spores over many miles. If you look at mega-colony of mushroom spores, it is strikingly similar to images of cosmic nebula and galaxies. Thank you fractal mathematics. Paul Stamets manages to convey his passion for mushrooms, making all of us who are passionate about them build a small mycelium that unites us. He also spreads that little great hope that makes you think that maybe we still have time to save the planet if we listen to the earth.