Fun with Fungus

This could be in your backyard!

(Workshop is now full!)

Want to wander into your yard to gather your own juicy oyster and shiitake mushrooms? You can! Mushrooms add a delicious earthy taste to your dishes, they don’t take up a lot of space and don’t require a lot of work to grow. Any shady, moist spot in your garden will do.

On April 10, 2011, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, we will be offering a mushroom growing workshop. There are many ways to grow mushrooms, and many kinds you can grow. This workshop will focus on growing shiitake and oyster mushrooms using dowel plugs in hardwood logs. We will touch on some other methods very briefly, but the dowel plug method is easy to do, and provides an efficient and aesthetic way to grow.

All participants must pre-register and pay for this workshop. Each registrant will receive 250 spores of their choice of mushroom (one type) and you can order any more you like in sets of 250. So, for example, if you want to grow both oyster and shiitake mushrooms, you can register and select shiitakes, then order an additional set of oysters.

Things to bring:

  • For every 250 spores you want to harvest, you’ll need 5–7 rounds of hardwood (any kind) between 48 inches diameter, two to four feet long (to total about 20 feet of hardwood altogether). If you have more, please bring some for others who might not.
  • Your hardwood rounds must be no more than 6 weeks old; which is to say that they cannot have been cut more than six weeks ago on the date of the workshop;
  • Also, if you have a cordless drill, or even an electric drill, please bring it along. Waiting to drill holes can be the most time consuming part.