Tom Carey: Grow your own mushrooms

After recently learning so much about mushroom cultivation from Ja (Jay) Schindler at the Green Education Center, fungus will soon be on the crop list at my Sundew Gardens. The one serious precaution before we begin; this is not about collecting potentially poisonous toadstools from the wild for food. Of all the millions of species and thousands of edible varieties, our being limited to a few store bought examples of mushrooms is a tragedy. Simple button caps or Portobellos are the least tasty or nutritious options we could be adding to our to our planetarily diverse menus.

Whether growing on rotting wood, roots of living plants or a compost medium, the different species all start from two spores (seeds) that ‘hook up’ and share genetic material. The mycelium (roots) then digests available nutrients in either a parasitic, symbiotic or saprobe relationship in every land-based environment on earth. What we recognize as mushrooms are the resultant fruiting bodies sprouting from the mycelium threads lacing the substrate below. This subterranean life recycles and provides vitamin and mineral nutrients to living plants, and eventually to our dietary needs.

The common mushroom available at the grocery store is the quickest and easiest to grow using a simple compost medium. Inoculated sawdust and rice hull starter bags of mycelium of numerous varieties are available online. Bury chunks of this living material in immature compost pile components; water liberally and in a few weeks the caps should start sprouting.

Shitake mushrooms take more preparation and time. The inoculant materials are on short wooden dowels, which are hammered into holes drilled into freshly cut logs. Locally available sweet gum, maple, and oak trunks about 2 feet long, 5 inches in diameter are manageable dimensions. This dowel method also works in pine using a limited number of other mushroom varieties. Keep the logs watered in a shaded location, and fruiting bodies should sprout in several months.

Pasteurized straw, mixed with mycelium, packed into any number of vessel types, will grow a crop in all kinds of locations. To avoid cross-contamination by other fungus, use enough starter material to overwhelm competition. Oyster mushrooms grown in laundry baskets full of straw sprout from the side slots. Or fill a cardboard box with the straw and medium and bury it in a shady, damp location.

To further research mycology at our amateur level, visit “Fungi for the People” on Facebook or check out Paul Stamets’ books and online information sources. I am just getting started on this new adventure, so check back with me in a few seasons.