Going green? Use mushroom compost this spring

What helps your lawn, garden and trees, offers environmentally friendly ways to recycle, and comes from the nearest mushroom farm? Mushroom Compost. Every home owner strives to have the greenest lawn, with the brightest flowers and liveliest trees, while still being good to the environment. Mushroom compost offers a safe and natural way to supply a lawn and garden with the nutrients it needs.

Mushroom compost is derived from 100% organic materials such as straw, peat moss, stable bedding, corn cobs, soybean meal and gypsum. Once pasteurized this material becomes a substrate on which mushrooms are grown. Because the growing needs of mushrooms and green plants is different, very little of the composts nutrients are used during the mushroom growing process. After the mushrooms are harvested the farmer is left with nutrient filled compost that is an ideal soil conditioner for outdoor gardening.

• Using mushroom compost in the garden helps to recycle a product which would otherwise be disposed of as waste. As the compost itself is recycled by-products from other industries, when mushroom compost is used on a garden double the recycling is taking place.
• Mushroom compost stores up to 70 percent of its own weight in water. This uses less water in dry spring or summer months when a water ban might take place.

Mushroom compost can be used as a mulch, soil conditioner, and potting mix additive. It is great for flowering gardens, trees and shrubs, vegetable and herb gardens, and established lawns.