Mushrooms

I have the unique opportunity of teaching workshops for continuing education credits as part of my job. While they are usually related to forestry, once in a while I do something out of the box just for something different. I gave our staff survival skills training on one occasion. This time we are going to learn everything we need to grow shiitake mushrooms in the woods.


I already enjoy cooking and eating fresh mushrooms, mostly the boring button mushrooms readily found at the grocery store. Although I have been eating morels from the woods for the last several years. Here’s a great picture of one. I find that morels taste best dipped in corn meal and fried in light oil.

While researching for this staff training, I learned that mushrooms are fungi. We get some of our best food with the help of fungi. Blue cheese and brie are flavored from fungi. Cacao beans must be fermented with fungi to destroy the bitter flavor they have naturally before being processed into chocolate. Yeasts used in beer and bread are a type of fungi. By the way, the alcohol in beer is made from microbial pee. The yeast eats the sugar and pees out alcohol. The holes and texture in bread are made from microbial farts! That is how yeast causes bread to rise.

Getting back to shiitake mushrooms, they are nutty and garlicky and really meaty compared to white mushrooms. You can order the spawn in the form of wooden dowel rods and drive them into holes drilled into an oak log. Corn and beans come from seeds, mushrooms come from spawn or spores. Six months to a year later, you have mushrooms. And a 3 or 4 foot log can produce mushrooms for several years in the right growing conditions.

I am planning on trying to grow some myself, so I’ll post again at some point with pictures and advice. You can read up in the meantime at UK Extension here.

Compost

If you have ever watched a home and garden show, or spent much time reading magazines about growing flowers, you have probably heard about composting. It is all the rage on the green websites too. Several years ago, I thought I would try my hand at composting. I was a little skeptical as I began building the first bin, but it would not take long for our family to be impressed.

Composting is nothing more than managing biomass at home and turning it into soil for gardens and landscape plants. As organic matter decomposes, it turns into some of the best soil you could ever hope to grow a tomato plant in. Composting eliminated one, maybe two bags of trash each week at our house. You never know if recycling glass or plastic really saves money and resources, but there’s little doubt about compost. You can watch the process right before your eyes in just a few weeks.

Some of the things we compost:

• dryer lint, old bread, leaves, paper
  

• spoiled fruit, vegetable peelings, plants
  

• cereal crumbs, coffee grinds, coffee filters

• leftovers, grass, egg shells
  

• chip crumbs, rabbit pellets, gerbil bedding

To get started, you need to build something to hold your compost material. You can see some good ideas here. Ideally, you need three bins to separate the materials through the decomposition process. The first bin has new material and you continually add to it. The second bin has mostly broken down material and could be used as a soil amendment (fertilizer). The third bin is material that is completely broken down. I have been able to make it work with two bins; it just takes a little longer.

The next thing you need to know is layering and aeration. Layering can be broken down into two words: brown and green. I have read that a 3 to 1 brown to green ratio works best, but I have used a 1 to 1 ration and have not had any problems with odor or decomposition; it just breaks down slower. Brown items are old leaves, dead plants, animal bedding, and paper. Everything else is green. Mainly, moist items, or things that contain water are green.

It is important to mix up the contents about once each week to ensure that air is mixed in and reaching all the material in the compost. Exposure to air increases the decomposition rate. This is the reason that materials in landfills do not break down; modern landfills are air tight. I have found it’s easiest to empty the compost from the bin, mix it, and shovel it back in.

One of the ways to be certain that your process is working correctly is that it will make tremendous heat. Often, it gets hot enough that it is uncomfortable to keep your hand against it. Layering correctly helps to breakdown materials quicker. Also, you should have a lid on your composter to help control moisture. Too much rain will definitely slow things down.

Composting may not save the world, but it does reduce material to the landfill. It saves me money because I buy less topsoil each year. This is also where most of our paper junk mail goes. And there is a ready supply of big juicy worms at the composter when it’s time to head to the lake and fish!