Growing mushrooms
Mushrooms are delicious, nutritious … and often quite expensive and who knows how fresh? It would be great to be able to grow mushrooms, so John attended a workshop in Rochester on growing mushrooms.
Two types reported to be fairly easy are shiitakes, grown on hardwood logs, and wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosa-annulata), grown on a bed of hardwood chips.
Oyster mushrooms
We tried one pre-packaged mushroom: oyster mushrooms. Here's how they developed.
Shiitake mushrooms
Shiitake log
This is the hardwood log John got at his workshop.
Shiitake innoculant was put in the holes drilled into the log, and we placed it in a shady place in our garden.
Hole for shiitake
Strangely, something seems to have eaten out the innoculant, so it will be surprising if we get mushrooms. But we're beginners at this, so who knows?
Wine cap mushrooms
Spreading hardwood chips
First, we prepared a roughly 4 foot by 8 foot frame and filled it with hardwood chips. We bought the chips from a local company and had them delivered.
Purchased spawn
We bought wine cap mushroom spawn from Field and Forest Products for about $30. (The bag is almost empty; it was full to begin with.)
Spawn closeup
Here's what the spawn (mixed with some sort of filler) looks like close up.
Spawn distributed
Here we've spread it on the bed, then we'll cover it with a few inches of the wood chips.
We got a late start on this (July). We might get some mushrooms this fall, but more likely in the spring.