Homegrown and foraged. Second week of April.

 

The weather here has been so dry, i have only found a handful of small morels this year.  i really haven't seen much of anything, but was really excited to  find these pheasant back/dryads saddle while hiking. They are super young and tender. Still not my favorite, but it's not bad.  Asparagus is slowing coming, we're getting like 1 shoot per day. We should have enough for a meal by the end of May.  i picked a few herbs and wild edibles for tea and to add to our salad. Chickweed, raspberry leaf, lemon balm, peppermint, purple dead nettle, violets and columbine flowers. i love this time of year. #earthprovides

 #homegrownandforaged

Mushroom farming and foraging.

Spring is a great time for foraging fresh mushrooms! Our favorites to find are the morels, but we've slowly been learning to safely identify and forage other types as well. 

We found a couple dozen morels in the woods behind our house. It wasn't a spectacular harvest, but i'm not complaining. We enjoyed them breaded & fried and also sauteed with butter & garlic. They are one of the easiest wild mushrooms to identify. 

 Last spring we plugged a bunch of logs with mushroom spores, and have been patiently waiting for them to fruit. It usually takes about a year, but we were getting a few here and there this past fall so we were hoping for a good harvest this spring.  We got a large water trough to help soak the logs to make sure they were staying damp enough.  Within just a few days of soaking these elm oysters began fruiting!

One of my first harvest pictures of the season. Homegrown spinach, lettuce, asparagus and oyster mushroom. i also foraged morels, chickweed, lambs quarter and purslane.

We have another oyster log beginning to fruit.  It has several clusters like this on it. 

 We also have a gorgeous shiitake coming in one of the logs. So far these have just been one at a time, i'd really love to see them take off and really fruit. The shiitakes are really yummy.

We spend so much time looking at our cultivated mushroom logs that we tend to forget about the wild ones that often fruit on the stumps of the trees that we cut about 7 years. Yesterday i was walking through the goat field and saw this giant flush of oysters in the woods on the other side of the fence. They were growing from a Tulip Poplar stump.

So far it's looking like a great mushroom season! We are in the process of plugging more logs and hope to continue cultivating fresh mushrooms for years to come.

Growing Fresh Mushrooms at Home

Growing our own mushrooms is one of those things i've been wanting to do forever, but hadn't quite gotten around to it. i love foraging for morels, and have been learning a few other wild mushrooms that grow on our land and are safe to eat like chanterelles, giant Puff balls, lion's mane and more. i've posted about foraging mushrooms before.  i also grew oysters from a kit several years ago, 

i started looking into mushroom plugs last year, and found that they are really quite inexpensive. The problem i had was that i needed fresh cut logs to plug, and also holes drilled into the logs. Both of which required a bit of help from the husband. Sometimes our priorities are not the same, so i never got them started last year

Kenan did have a interest in growing mushrooms though,  and so he attended a mushroom woodshop last fall. This spring he decided he was ready to try growing mushrooms and put in an order to Mushroom Mountain.   i was really just interested in trying shiitakes, but he went all out and bought a bunch of different mushroom spores to try. 

Earlier this spring while he was working on clearing/flattening part of our land that may eventually be the new Tiemeyer Glass Studio, he cut down a large branch of oak tree.  The tree had been damaged several years before when we cut trees to pay for the new house. It was alive, but had a lot of damage to part of it, and really needed to be cleaned up. So the damaged area came off, and Kenan cut it  up for mushroom logs. 

Growing mushrooms, is really pretty easy! First, the wood has to be freshly cut (usually within 6 weeks is okay) oak, maple, sweet gum, poplar, or other deciduous softwoods will work. Soak the logs by immersing in clean water for 1 – 2 days, but let the bark dry before inoculating.  Logs and stumps can be drilled, these are about 1/4 " diameter holes.  

The holes are then filled with wooden plugs that are colonized with the fungus of your choice.  We used a hammer to pound them into the logs.

 After the plugs are in, you can wax the surface to seal them in and protect them from drying out. .Once plugged, you need to soak/water the logs a couple times a week to keep them from drying out and then all you have to do is wait! When the mushroom’s root system has threaded itself throughout the log or stump, it will want to start fruiting. Fruiting can be seasonal, depending on temperature, and last several years.

This is a log  Kenan inoculated at the mushroom workshop last year. It has been completely neglected, just left outside and watered only by the rain. So we were a bit surprised to see this gorgeous Shiitake appear right next to one of the plugs.  At the suggestion of a friend, we soaked the log for 24 hours, so hopefully we'll start to see a few more appear.

This is pretty reassuring. If we can grow them without really trying, imagine if we put a bit of effort into them! We may actually get some good mushroom harvests! i believe the plugs we are trying are shiitake, oyster, lion's mane and hen of the woods. If these grow well, i'd love to try out some other varieties. Mushroom Mountain has a really good selection, and have great customer service.

You can also find more info about growing mushrooms here.