What is the purpose of adding mushroom spores? Do you have a mushroom spore product and you're wondering how to use it?

I would think in general you can plant any time, and the presence of fungus spores should have no effect (assuming they are beneficial and not harmful to plants). Without knowing exactly what you propose to use, it's hard to say specifically.

Most likely you are thinking of Spent Mushroom substrate, or compost. It is added just as any other form of organic matter is. Whether you could plant in soil amended with SMC depends on several factors, but generally you should wait a couple of weeks after tilling it in. If this material is spread on the soil no waiting would be necessary.

http://plantscience.psu.edu/research/centers/turf/extension/factsheets/mushroom-soil

kimmq is kimmsr

there will be fungi already in a raised bed, so you are always planting (right away) into beds with spores.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how much organic matter is in that soil.

kimmq is kimmsr

Kim, explain us how that changes the problem at hand. what does the OP need to do in the two different cases?

We need the OP to come back and explain what they mean more clearly.

Actually, I had read an article on adding Mushroom spore or spawn to beds so that the roots (can't remember what they call them) will grow and add organic matter to the soil--can't find the article again --but wondered of I added it, to my raised beds, if I should just leave them to grow or could I plant crops in the bed immediately--I really appreciate your impute.

Was it an article about adding mycorrhizal fungi when planting? Or about using mushroom compost, as kimmsr suggested, as a soil amendment? I think we're having trouble working out exactly what is meant here.

Mushrooms are the physical evidence, what we see, of what may be happening in the soil. They are the fruiting bodies of fungi in the soil. Fungi need organic matter to live on and if the soil lacks adequate amounts of organic matter no matter how many spores or whatever are added to the soil they will either lay there dormant or die and not grow. Adding adequate amounts of organic matter will allow the fungi, and soil bacteria, to live and grow and there will be no need to "inoculate" the soil with spores or anything else, the wee buggers that make up the Soil Food Web will develop and row.

Perhaps this Soil Biology Primer will be of some help to some in understanding what is happening in the soil.

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/soils/health/biology/

kimmq is kimmsr

Thank you all for your help. floral_ukz.8/0SW UK , your word -mycorrhizal fungi was exactly what I was looking for --although I had no idea what to call it. I now have been able to research the subject and found out info and where to order it--Thanks again!!

Ahah - now we can start a whole new debate as to whether it's worth purchasing at all. Stand by for a spirited discussion ;-)

unless you garden on a beach, if you add OM, you will get fungi. I have two main sources, first my compost pile is under some old trees, and second I collect and bury rotten wood in the beds. You could get the fungi also by collecting dead leaves under established shrubs, some dirt from a forest floor, etc. The glomus species needed for veggies or trees are virtually the same. Note that using gloms species plus tilling equals flushing money down the toilet. You use them only in a no-till situation.

I have had very good experience with mycorrhizal spores in the past, in particular a planting of strawberries yielded 100% survival for those plants whose roots had been dusted, and close to 0% for those which had not. But then I discovered that putting some rotten wood in the planting hole gave the same results, and of course it is fungi AND fungi food, which is why it is better (and cheaper).