Good or bad fungus? My beginnings of soil

Indoor Growing Organics
#1

I’ve recently started growing with some roots organic after years of salts and the plants have been doing great. I went and looked in one of the bins storing extra soil that I was planning on using tomorrow and saw this on one part

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I feel I see like a teeny tiny bit that is not really white as the rest but maybe im looking too hard. Is this good or bad? It’s hard comparing to pics online. im hoping good cuz I don’t wanna toss this soil and try to figure out how to get some more quick lol but of course I wanna be safe.

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#2

I think the colour difference is caused by it drying out a bit, but when your organic soil grows stuff that’s not a bad thing. It’s shows it’s alive with lots of goodies. :grin: mix it up and plant away

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#3

Ok awesome thank you! I know I’ve seen people post pictures of Their soil having a layer of something like this in a good way, I believe referred to as mycelium so I was hoping to hear that lol the tiny bit not white had me nervous. I gotta chill the nerves for my soil grow! I keep tryna tell myself “dirt ain’t dirty”

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#4

This is what mine looks like a week after it gets all mixed up
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The longer it’s damp, covered and not disturbed the more noticeable it is

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#5

Yup, mycelium, it’s good stuff, just mix it in when you use it.
The only time I think I had a problem was some unexpected damping off of seedlings.

Cheers
G

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#6

Awesome very nice!

#7

Glad to hear that, I’m not worried about some little seedlings struggling to make it through really just anything contagious that can take down everything or fllowering plants. I’m gonna make sure I go slow with everything in soil I’d rather build better quality slowly and carefully than get too excited and burn the crap out of a tent.

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#8

After the powder mildew infestation spread everywhere so fast on me that one time, i don’t care as much about other issues like even having hermies recently even pollinating a whole flower tent is whatever because I can have healthy happy moms and clones that are ready to help.

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#9

My experience with many mycological endeavors beit gourmet, medicinal, hallucinogenic or horticultural fungi, the yellow discoloration that stains the mycelium is nothing more than excreted metabolites. It’s commonly referred as myc piss because it looks like pee.
Nothing to worry about, it’s normal.

Trichoderma can come in several colors also but only once it is fully mature, in its vegetative phase its all white, only once it matures it will sporealate and develope its color. But it too will produce and excrete yellow metabolite liquid. Again tho, nothing to worry about, unless it’s black.

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#10

Bad fungus for sure.
I recomend a desumihfier

#11

Are you being sarcastic? Lol I’m just asking cuz the others on here and the rep for this soil that grows great locally all agreed it was good stuff. If you’re truly saying it’s bad do you know what this fungus is called so I can read on it

#12

Thank you for some info! I have some land outside and I’ve been trying to learn composting and organic farming of everything not just weed. I drink tons of coffee and use the unbleached “biodegradable” coffee filters, whatever biodegradable really means. But because I drink so much of it I don’t always put the grounds in compost piles especially in winter time because through all of winter we have feet of snow here until spring, so it’s not easy to just get some leaves and mix. So I had those grounds and filters stored and closed with nothing else and I believe I have large amounts of trichoderma growing in here. There is like large amounts more at the bottom I’ll post a pic here I was thinking maybe I should mix these in the ground before I put my weed plants in the ground outside they’re a solid size in pots now. I’ve read trichoderma is helpful in resistance to botrytis which in my area is probably the biggest battle outside.

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#13

That’s mycelium In your dirt Homie.I cook batches of soil in black plastic huge dollar Store totes for 2 weeks at a time with organic dry amendments with mychorazai in it (Dr Earth Pure Gold) and when you pop the top you will see mycelium streaks everywhere.Want to really see some sparks fly?Use malted 2 row barley and mix it with good EWC.Even little dried malted barley kernels try to sprout.It’s a good sign means you have some life in that dirt

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#14

Awesome thank you! I’ll be looking into all of this. I know last year outside I used some dr earth dry nutrients on top and had a Beauitiful layer of this on top. But that was outside huge plants and i was expecting it. Because I’ve only been doing hydro indoors and I just opened up the soil container without adding anything I was nervous but there is a bit of stuff in the roots organic original so it makes sense. Thankful for all you guys I’m real happy instead of super nervous now lol

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#15

I’m a huge coffee drinker as well, and I go through the same scenario as you. Winter hits and I don’t walk my happy ass outside, through crotch high snow to the composters. I use to save it and every time it turned into a trich farm. There’s been times I’ve forgotten about a cup in the garage and when I discovered it, sure as shit, Trichoderma was growing on the liquid surface.

Your right, it is very beneficial for the garden. It doesn’t have any properties that fight botyritis directly, however it does initiate the SAR (systemic acquired resistance) in plants, which when combined with other microbes dramatically enhance growth, resistance to disease, pests and environmental stress. Specific strains of trichoderma will enhance root development much more than any endo/ecto mycorhizal. Those strains are Verdes, Koningii, Harzianum.
If your up for a good read, that’s a good place to start with Trichoderma.

If your serious about organic cultivation I’d recommend you read up on the microbial loop of soil born organisms. It helps tremendously to grasp an understanding of how organic works.
I’ve been a soil grower for going on 21yrs and been formulating my substrates from scratch for about 15 of it. Once you get it going, it only gets better and better. I’ve been recycling my soil for 2 decades now and to me, its worth more than gold.

If you have the time or the motivation, get a worm farm going, they love coffee grounds and fresh vermi castings are far more superior to any you can buy. Furthermore you can enrich the quality of your castings with an array of different inputs.

Lastly check out bokashi composting. Winter time isn’t the best for outdoor composters, but indoor bokashi composting is an ideal solution to that. When spring returns, now you’ve got a shit load of “pre chewed” parent material that can be buried in the soil, thrown into a composter or fed to the worm farm. And as a bonus, the lechate that’s produced from the bokashi durring fermentation is an exceptional fertilizer, immediately available to the roots and foliar spray. Additionally it’s probiotic and aids in plant and soil health. Flaculative anerobes are one of nature’s best kept secrets. KNF and JADAM operate on these principles.

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#16

Thank you X100 I’ll be reading about a lot of this. Id forsure love to start a worm farm. I picked up a good bit of horse waste from a local family with a huge pile outside I threw some more grinded leaves in it and cooked it outside for a while and the worms were crazy in that pile. I used a lot of that this year outside in the food garden. I’ve loved growing forever but living in small houses/apartments in palm beach county fl for most of my life It was tough to even think about organic weed grows inside with how hot and humid it is there, so that’s a big part of why I’ve just been with salty nutes forever. But there’s a bit of reasons why it’s important for me to give organic a shot now. I love reading all this stuff and researching a lot of it even deeper. I worked on a big ass off the books farm in cali after high school but that was soil with non organic nutrients. It feels very different being happy when you see a fungus. I appreciate when those that have spent the time with organics passing on some knowledge. I’m possibly the youngest OGer on here, but growing has been my passion since day 1. Any books or specific websites you recommend to be a good read on the microbial loop of soil ?

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#17

Jeff Lowenfels has a couple books.
Teaming with Nutrients
Teaming with Bacteria
Teaming with Fungi
Teaming with Microbes

Ingrams paper microbial loop
But there’s lots on the internet about the loop in general. Focus on the soil side, but aquatic is equally useful.

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#18

Lowenfels also has a book on cannabis, it’s tailored towards autoflower varieties but useful non the less.

Theres several great threads right here on OG that are an excellent resource for organic approaches. But 2 that immediately come to mind are

CrunchBerries’Probiotic SIP Thread - Overgrow.com CrunchBerries’Probiotic SIP Thread

BeagleZ’ COPA Cabana - Overgrow.com BeagleZ' COPA Cabana

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#19

Awesome really appreciate all of this

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#20

Here ya go bud, I dug this up for you. This should ease your mind a bit.

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