Mushroom Class

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We took the Mushroom Cultivation Design Course at Fungi for the People in Eugene Oregon in late March. We learned a staggering amount of information and were really excited to come home and start to practice cultivating Mushrooms. We were introduced to a few we did not know before our class and learned to make Reishi Tea (very relaxing sleep aide) and Chaga Tea (a great coffee replacement).

We can home with plans to build the equipment we would need to produce our own mushrooms on large scale. We have a lot of work to do before we are able scale up, but now is the time for building and learning. We built a small clean box for sectioning and  transferring cultures. We started to build our own version of a Laminar Flow Hood (based on Ja Schindler’s Design).

Now it is all about practice and creating the right conditions for the Mycelium and Mushrooms to thrive…

Mushroom bag sterilization

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Our first attempt at sterilizing Mushroom bags.

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Lessons in Mushroom Culitivation. Part I – Logs

Our first lesson in Mushroom Cultivation was figuring out how to find logs. We had a few bags of Mushroom Dowel Plug Spawn for Fungi for the People in Eugene, Oregon. We just needed logs to grow them in. We looked on Craigslist to find our logs.

It was suggested that our spawn would do well on hard woods. A few months ago, we were city folk who loved the country. Which logs were hard woods? We didn’t know? We drove up a long road following some fairly vague instructions. There was snow on the ground. It was a bit exciting, but I am not used to driving in snow.

The logger had the flu that day, but he told us to come up anyway. His wife told us we could look through the log pile, pick what we wanted then come back to pay for them. She gave us a brief explanation of the difference between Douglas Firs and Maple.  We drove back to the woodpile to search and found mostly 20 foot or longer ‘logs’ piled like pick-up-sticks. There were a only a few that were even small enough to fit in our truck.

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We loaded up four logs, back up the hill to pay for them then on our way back to town. Lucy, our Giant puppy, enjoyed licking snow off of the logs as we drove home.

We drilled the logs and thought they really must be hard wood, because they were so hard to drill. Debbie was concerned they might catch on fire.

It took a few drill holes to realize there might be a better choice of drill bits and after a quick trip to the tool store we had a lot more success. We drilled holes about every five inches. We later discovered that we may have put way too many holes, but we think it will work out…Faster!We chose White Elm Oyster plugs for these logs.

Now we wait…