lol, ironically, you couldn't even use that as a mushroom substrate until it had been leached of all it's excess ammonia for a couple days/weeks but after that point it would be a good substrate for growing mushrooms.

However, what is good for growing mushroom is not necessarily good for growing plants and converse of that statement is even more true - what is good for plants is almost certainly not good for mushrooms.

Usually when people talk about "mushroom soil" they're referring to used bulk substrate that mushrooms were growing in. After they've finished with the substrate, because it cannot be reused (mushrooms have eaten everything they can use from it) it is sold to nurseries and gardeners because it is now a wonderful soil amendment for plant life.

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To speed up the leaching process you can keep it watered down for a couple days and turn it every once in a while and within a week it should be fine. Or, if you added 3-4x as much peat moss or other "brown" material it would quickly calm down as it began to self compost. I'd smack that guy silly for what he's done. In all likelihood he probably didn't pay more than $10-15 USD per cubic yard of that stuff as well - hopefully your markup wasn't much more steep than that.

I thought I was getting the already used stuff. If only I had known. :)

I only paid 50 for 2 yds delivered. So atleast i didnt get totally hosed. He is a nice guy (mennonite) I use him all the time for other things. First time on this.

I did water it well last night. So continued watering and turning once a day should solve the problem. I could also remove some (great more shoveling of $$it)and add some partially composted leaves to the mix as well. The brown material should slow it down some also? A week or 2 isnt bad. I can wait that long.

Any other suggestions are welcomed :)

mostly it takes about 2 weeks for the heat to go and settle enough to plant in, i would spread it and then plant in that time period.

we use spent mushroom compost direct from the farm that way you know nothing has been added, and plant do grow in it right away, and as it matures it's growing capacity gets even better.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

This is a good example of why you cannot rely on some one elses description of what they are trying to sell you and why you need to go and look at what you will be buying to be sure it is what you want.

Actually I did it was just months prior. After talking to him he had ran out of the used stuff a while back and had subing the fresh. I waited to long.

it has only been a week since I had it delivered. The terrible fresh manure smell has passed. The pile has cooled. Not hot at all anymore. I doubled the volume with partially composted leaves and watered the pile everyday.

Im going to try a plant or 2 in the next few days as a trial run to see what happens.