Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Moss Gardening

I've been into hunting and cultivating mushrooms for a while now but lately I've been getting more and more interested in moss. Hunting and cultivating mushrooms falls under mycology while mosses, lichens (also awesome) and liverworts fall under bryology. By the way, I also write a blog on Michigan mushrooms. Click here to check it out.
So...what is moss? The short answer is that moss is a plant that, rather than true roots, has what are called rhizoids. It also reproduces using spores like a fungus. The spores of a moss are contained in small pods called spore capsules. For more on what a moss is, check out the explanation from Mountain Moss.
One way to transfer and plant moss is to take pieces, plant them like sod and then fill in the space between with a moss slurry. A moss slurry is made by taking pieces of the moss, putting them in a blender, and adding a substrate such as beer, yogurt or buttermilk. I don't believe in wasting beer and buttermilk is cheap so that's what I went with. I would not suggest using a blender that you plan to use for anything else but that's up to you. I found a shitty old blender for 3 dollars at a thrift store and so far it's working great. To create the slurry, put some of the moss in the blender, add the buttermilk...and blend it! The first picture here is just some of the moss in the blender. The second picture is after I added the buttermilk and blended. It's like dirty buttermilk and smells like it. Tasty.
One thing you'll want to do is pull all the grass and other plants from the area you want to grow moss in. This will limit competition and allow the moss to take over easier. I decided to start in a fairly shady spot in my front yard. Hopefully it propagates. If it does well, I can then take pieces and spread it further. My goal is to not have grass in a few years (or sooner). Moss is only one of the things I plan to use for this purpose.
To get moss, you have options. You can buy it at some nurseries and also online at a place like Mountain Moss. You can also do what I did and find some you like out in the wild. I've found a lot of different types that I like in graveyards, the woods, etc. I found one out while I was mushroom hunting that had these awesome orange spore capsules. I took some of it (while leaving enough for it to survive of course), brought it home and used it. I also found some that I liked in my backyard. It's really not all that hard to find if you just open your eyes and look for it.
There is no need to pay for something that Mother Nature provides for free!
In the third picture here, you can see the results of my work. I pulled out the grass and loosened the dirt. I then planted the moss sod and filled in some of the space with the moss slurry. It looks pretty crappy at the moment but hopefully the moss will start to grow. I will post an update at some point in the future.

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