Being a Community Relations Manager for EarthFare, Belle gets to hear about things…
Belle: there’s a mushroom cultivation workshop happening.
Me: when?
Belle: today.
Me: how much?
Belle: donations.
Me: you want to go?
Belle: working.
Me: interesting.
The workshop was run by Tradd Cotter of Mushroom Mountain and was excellent. I think most people at the workshop knew more about mushrooms than me; I could tell because they asked knowing questions. But Tradd certainly knew more about mushrooms than everyone else; I could tell because he knew how to answer the knowing questions.
The workshop was a mixture of lectures on home mushroom cultivation, a walk around the farm to see some mushroom cultivation in action and some hands on mushroom cultivation. Above you can see Tradd boiling cotton seed hulls to rid them of any microbes so that we could impregnate them with pink oyster mushroom spawn, bag them and take home our very own mushroom garden (bag).
Three weeks later:
I can’t explain how exciting it was to see the white mycelia (look at me with my mushroom vocabulary) take over the bag and then witness the amazing and rapid (3 days from pink dot to pizza) mushroom development. The best thing? In about three weeks I should have a second fruiting!
My Mushroom Future
I have some shitake plugs once I find some fresh oak logs to impregnate.
I have some blue oyster spawn which I plan to grow on coffee grinds (you can grow them on almost anything!).
I have an experiment with Belle’s old jeans and the blue oysters…
Mushrooms are very very exciting. Visit Tradd’s website and blog and get some spawn!