Mushroom Cultivation Workshop

Last posting on mushrooms for a while, I promise.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Everdale Farms to attend a Mushroom Cultivation Workshop, taught by Bruno and Paula from Fun Guy Farm. It was a full day of learning about mushrooms: different types, how they grow, and how to cultivate your own on a small or large scale.

Some basic info we learned:

• Fungi are decomposers
  
• Mushrooms are the reproduction system of the fungi organism
  
• There are many types of fungi, including molds
  
• Different fungi / mushroom varieties have very different needs - e.g. growing medium, light, humidity
• Maintaining a sterile environment is very important, to prevent other fungi from colonizing the medium
  
• Cultivating mushrooms is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than growing plants!
  

In the end, we each took home a log which we "injected" with shiitake sawdust mycocelium. This log needs to be kept moist through the summer (so that the shiitake mycocelium can grow and inhabit the entire log), and undergo a period of dormancy during the winter. Hopefully if all goes well, next spring the log will be sprouting shiitakes.













Photo (L): Sawdust mycocelium, still in plastic cell sheets.
Photo (R): A log waiting to be drilled with holes.













Photo (L): Logs plugged with mycocelium and a thin layer of styrofoam (to prevent drying), and stacked.
Photo (R): A shiitake mushroom poking out of a one-year old log.