How to cultivate Shiitake mushrooms

Grow
your
own
mushrooms
at
home

I took a half day course with Frank Michael of MushroomPeople at the Ecovillage Training Center yesterday. 16 people came for the course from Tennessee and a few surrounding states. I was interested in learning more about growing mushrooms since we grow lots of Shiitake here at the ETC and I enjoy their bountiful harvests. I wanted to know how someone like me would go about growing my own.

And it is so simple! Set up the right conditions and the spawn does the rest. Purchase a starter kit from MushroomPeople and you're on your way. After that all it takes is getting fresh logs of the right sizes- fell them yourself or purchase them from someone else. Then using a drill an drill bit, you drill holes in the logs, hammer in your plug spawn into the holes, and cover with wax. It is more specific than this, and there are other ways of doing it, especially for other mushrooms, but you get the basic idea...

I've been inspired to purchase a starter kit to bring it back with me to New Jersey. I thought of my dad who may get into something like this... Its almost like a carpentry project, but you get to eat from it! Imagine stepping outside a few days after a rainfall, and harvesting fresh, delicious, nutritious, medicinal mushrooms for a fraction of the cost in the stores.

Some of the easiest (and tastiest) to grow at home are the Shiitake and the Oyster, which I love. Soon my dad will be growing specialty mushrooms in his backyard!

Go to MushroomPeople's website- http://www.mushroompeople.com/