Mushroom Compost on the vegetable garden

Has any of you used Mushroom Compost on your vegetable garden?
I recently attended a tomato class and they suggested to use Mushroom Compost.
I'd like to find out if you personally have tried this compost and if you like/dislike it.
I found some info here:http://www.mushroomcompost.org/

I got 4 cu yards last spring to top dress some of my beds and I LOVE it. More importantly, my plants loved it. Great tilth, the worms adore it and it holds moisture without being soggy.

Unfortunately the local source went out of business and I want about twice as much again to do the rest of the garden. I'm working on it.

I was not impressed with the bagged stuff, tho; it was cut heavily with sand.

I find that very interesting because I had read to stay away from it because it was very nutrient deficient and very high in salt content. I may have to go back and review my information.

You may want to start here with a paper published in HortTechnology:
http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/20/2/449.full.pdf

For someone with good soil, there are perhaps better products. Mine has virtually no organic material in it except what I am adding to it. The only other sources of bulk composts here are horse manure (with the danger of persistent herbicides) and cotton gin waste (which needs composting for at least a year or two to be usable.)

A county ext gave a talk to our garden class about using several varieties of fertilizers and told us some horror stories about horse manure and how certain herbicides cans pass right thru a horses digestive system ..This was confirm by OSU at the plant pathology lab ..So I longer use any manure from unknown sources Just sayin

NicoleC

Maybe this is why I have seen different results: This is a quote from the study you mention.
"the amount and quality of materials used to make mushroom substrate is dramatically different in Pennsylvania" (Beyer, 2003; Wuest,
1982; Wuest et al., 1995).
I can certainly see it would be a great soil conditioner, the lack or nutrients and the high salt content was the big draw back I read about. But in the study you mention the nutrients are way higher than I would have suspected. When I bought this house I could not keep grass growing in the front, my neighbor came over and I explained the problem, and he told me the former owners had hauled in loads of mushroom compost and placed in the front yard. After reading up on it I think I just assumed the high salt content was preventing the grass from growing, now I think too much shade was a more likely reason.
Found this which seems to confirm mushroom compost is beneficial for gardens, but warns against using mushroom compost tea on tomatoes, other than that it appears fine. It seems to boil down to the source and mixture of the mushroom compost, Penn. seems to be by far the leading state in growing mushrooms, and their standards for mushroom compost appear to be higher than a lot of others.
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/mushroom-compost-tomatoes-46354.html

Mushroom compost sounds like a mighty expensive way to fertilize to a lawn to me, but any salts would have leached out with natural rainfall reasonably quickly.

I'm sure quality varies from source to source, although the requirements for growing mushrooms are the same everywhere so I would assume regardless of the inputs they use, they are trying to achieve the same final product.

I will say that the stuff in the bags in the big box stores doesn't look good to me, and I wouldn't use it.

thanks
I am hardening off my tomato plants today and transplant out on Sunday.
I will stay away from this compost and keep using the one I have used for year.
I am preparing my beds today, putting down compost and covering my pvc hoops with perforated plastic.
Now ... my next problem is to decide which tomato I will not plant .... ooohhhh
I have so many ... but I am keeping some extra in case I will lose them.

Thanks y'all for your help

I have two 10 X 12' raised beds and I add a yard of mushroom soil to each every year. Its a very good high organic matter mushroom soil that is only 15 bucks a yard at a local garden center. The stuff is teaming with so many microbes it emits steam. I have had very good results. Definitely good quality in PA.

We have a Monterrey mushroom place close. Their medium is mostly chicken manure & hay and the salts are urea salts and such. The majority of the medium is sent to a bagging for mixing and distribution. I get it straight from the mushroom beds drippin and love it- but I know it can burn plants, so it is used on my lousiest areas and turned into the ground in the fall. The water and ammonia parts then have time to seep deep into the area I intend to plant.

The nursery where I buy my regular compost and garden supplies doesn't carry Mushroom Compost.
Which it is very strange, since they always tell people in DFW what to do.

drthor- Scotts Hyponex has the contract to bag the mushroom compost here- and many people dont like that company. There are many others who they distribute the product to. I don't remember who offhand...

Thanks anyway