Mushrooms Day 12: Almost Edible

Yesterday, the primordia had grown enough that the individual mushrooms were becoming obvious:

Holy mycelia, Batman! There must be 15-20 mushrooms in that one big primordium, and it looks like there are around 20 primordia all over the kit, which translates to 300-400 mushrooms total! Anybody want to buy some mushrooms when they're ready? I'm not convinced we're going to be able to eat them all while their at their peak. I know, we can dry them, but what's the fun in that?

By yesterday evening, they had grown significantly:

Today, the mushrooms are noticeably bigger, more distinct, and more mushroom-like in shape:

 

I noticed some shrooms sprouting under the label, so I peeled it off to let them grow:

Next time, I'll remove the label immediately. There are new primordia showing up everywhere on the bag where there is no mold. It's quite impressive, and also sort of nice that we'll get the mushrooms in stages, so they won't all peak at the same time. We're probably two or three days away from edible shrooms!

Mushrooms Day 10: Primordia Galore

Okay, dark patches in the straw are NOT primordia. On day 8, I turned the kit around to check for primordia on the back and found an enormous green splotch:

That's mold, not primordia, which means we've been keeping the humidity too high. I had just sprayed the kit (oops), so I resolved not to spray on day 9.

However, there were clear signs of primordia developing on day 8. You can see one poking out a bit on the far left of the moldy photo. Here's a clearer shot, showing popcorn-like growth:

 

 On day 9, these had grown noticably:

 

There were similar primordia all over the front of the kit.

Today, day 10, the primordia do not appear to have progressed much:

So I misted the kit again. While the primordia don't appear larger, they do appear more bifurcated (split into lots of little knobs). We'll see what they do with a little more moisture.

Update: More Shiitakes on the Way

I received an email response asking me to call Fungi Perfecti (pronounced Funj-eye Perfect-eye, apparently). The customer service rep I spoke to there was very helpful and immediately offered me a replacement, which will arrive here in about a week. Meanwhile, she instructed me to put the failed kit in the compost. Hmmm... will we have shiitakes growing out of the compost come spring?

Well, this way, we won't be inundated by mushrooms all at once.

Mushrooms Day 7: Primordia and Other Mushroom Vocabulary

Day 7 of our great mushroom experiment, and there's a big dark patch on the side of the pearl oyster mushroom kit:

According to our instruction manual, this is the first sign of the development of primordia - "the youngest stage of mushroom formation, usually appearing as small bumps or clusters."

Here's some more mushroom terminology for you:

• flush - a crop of mushrooms
• fruit - to cause mushrooms to form
• initiate - to stimulate mushroom formation by dropping temperature ("cold shocking"), adding more moisture, or providing air or indirect light
• mycelium - the fungal network of thread-like cells that gives rise to mushrooms
• spores - microscopic "seeds" of mushrooms which appear as a white dust around and below mature Oyster mushrooms

Note that other species of mushroom may have differently-colored spores: black, brown, even red, blue, orange, or purple.

At any rate, I expect that we'll see the small bumps of primordia in the next day or two. A correction to my last post: the instructions say that we should see primordia within 14 days of starting to mist the kit. The photos in the manual show primordia at 7 days, so we're doing just fine. If all continues as expected, we'll have mushrooms ready for harvest in about four days.

The shiitake mushrooms look pretty much the same as last night. I've had no word back yet from Fungi Perfecti on what to do with them, so I misted them as instructed, just to be on the safe side.

Early Impressions of the NOFA Conference

My head is spinning from all the information I've been gathering at the NOFA Summer Conference. I've attended workshops on how to start a CSA, how to make the most of your forested land, and, of course, lots of workshops on mushrooms and mycology. One of the two keynote speakers, Paul Stamets, is a recognized mycological expert, and the projects that he's detailed have been wide-ranging and utterly fascinating, including:

• Counteracting bioterrorism
• Cleaning up toxic oil spills, in soil and in the sea
• Finding better treatments for tuberculosis and smallpox
• Growing crops like corn twice as strong and productive
• Finding treatments for neurological disorders such as Altzheimer's
• and so much more...

The conference has had fantastic child care for the kids, including grooming Jersey heifers, painting banners, marching in a parade, and putting on a play, so this has been something of a vacation for my husband and I. Well, a vacation in which we are constantly racing from workshop to child care to workshop to child care to lunch to child care to workshop, etc.

Aside from the sheer amount of information I'm gathering, a couple of things have really surprised me. One is the number of cool things I'm now thinking, Hey, I could do that. The other is the sheer number of random people we've connected with, including a CSA family from New York and a couple from Santa Fe trying to start a community farm.

And there's the amazing range of niches and markets represented here: alpaca farmers, black walnut orchards, raw milk dairies, and yes, I even found a farm that produces sunflower oil. Too much to describe right now, and it's time to put the girls to bed. More tomorrow.

NOFA Conference: Mission for Missin' Local Products

I try to eat as much local, organic food as I can, but there are some things I have to buy nonlocal. A few of these are preferential - I have New Mexico green chile on my breakfast burrito every morning. I've tried growing it here, and it just doesn't come out right. Then there are things that just can't be grown in New England that we consider essential: coffee, black tea, chocolate, bananas, olive oil, cinnamon and similar spices.

And then there are the things that ought to be available locally that I can't find: nuts, mushrooms, oils, and sugar. I was delighted to find a workshop at the NOFA conference on growing black walnut trees for nuts and timber. Hopefully, I will meet other nut growers there and find out where I can buy local nuts the way I used to buy pinon nuts on the side of the road in New Mexico. Similarly, there are lots of workshops on mushrooms, which I have yet to spot at a farmers' market anywhere.

Oil and sugar are the two that burn my noodle most. In the land of maple, you can find lots of maple syrup and maple candy, but no actual, commercial granular maple sugar. Why? And beets grow prolifically in New England. Why is there no beet sugar available? Admittedly, cane sugar from Florida is not a terrible compromise, but it just bugs me.

Finally, I have yet to find, anywhere, locally produced cooking oils. Olive oil is admittedly impossible (and the top on my list of crops I'd grow if I ever return to New Mexico), but surely there are plenty of other sources: corn oil, sunflower. Does rapeseed grow here for canola oil? And cycling back to the discussion on nuts, what about walnut or almond oil? Of late, I've been substituting locally produced butter, but there are a lot of cases where I'd much rather use a good oil instead. With any luck, I'll find a source of locally produced oils at the NOFA conference.

What are some other examples of things you ought to be able to find locally and can't? Please comment.

Backyard Local: When It Pays to Consult an Expert First

Today, I did an exceedingly stupid thing. I ate a wild mushroom without consulting an expert first.

Before you gasp in horror, I'm (obviously) perfectly fine. I knew immediately, with the first nibble, that I had the wrong fungus in my mouth and washed it out before ingesting it. The mushroom turned out to be the rather well-named False Chanterelle. It had me totally fooled, although it did not have the characteristic apricot smell and was rather more orange than I'd expected. I found them growing on the side of the driveway into my work and gathered a few this morning to test. They really, really do look like chanterelles, but the giveaway (I found out later) is that the gills do not extend down the stems.

False chanterelles are not terribly poisonous. Some people even consider them edible, but they're known to cause gastrointestinal upset. The tiny nibble I took was spicy and peppery in flavor, rather than fruity as a chanterelle should be.

So the moral here is to be properly trained in the identification of wild mushrooms. I have contacted the Boston Mycological Club for more information on their classes and guided walks and will let you know when they get back to me. I'm also planning on attending a workshop or two on mushrooms at the Northeast Organic Farming Association Summer Conference in August.