All posts in Mushrooming

Episode 11- growing mushrooms and more [ 34:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1468)

For today’s podcast I covered a few different topics from vitamin C mega doses to more beekeeping tips and more. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

I switched to the iPhone for recording the podcast, let me know if the audio quality is finally up to par.

Oyster Mushrooms

Mushroom Kit in a bin

Sponsor of the day

• Backyard Food Production

Show Outline

• Mother Earth news fair on Sept 24-25 in Seven Spring Pennsylvania. I hope to see you there! General Information about the fair.
• Mega-doses of vitamin C – I plan to address this in a future podcast
• Bee Keeping Tips For Today
  • Barefoot Beekeeper digital version
  • Try buying some brood frame from a local bee keeper if you are going to start with a package
  • Lawn Mower – Not as big a problem as I would have suspected
  • Choose a location in full sun for your bees if your climate is similar to Pennsylvania. Consult your bee keeping mentor (You don’t have one yet?? Shame on you!)
• Growing Mushrooms
  • http://www.fieldforest.net
  • Oysters could be the easiest to grow… good place to start
  • Indoor kits come in plastic bags, put them inside a plastic tote filled with waterlogged sand for better results
  • Grow mushrooms on toilet paper
  • Grow mushrooms outdoors on logs

Episode 10: New Years Goals and Mycorrhizal Fungi Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yeah it’s a pretty strange title for the Podcast… but that is the topic for today’s show.

Here is your outline:

Sponsor of the day:

Food Security Knowledge Pack

My New Years Resolutions

1. Stop interrupting people in conversations, be a more mindful and aware of my conversations and surroundings.
2. Cliché Goal Alert!! – Lose some weight!!
3. Stop being such a consumer and embrace a more frugal lifestyle

2011 Project short list.

1. Design/budget/plan my aquaponics system
2. Bees!
3. Baby!
4. Mushroom Production
5. Triple the size of the garden
6. Maximize the assets already on my land (Orchard)
7. Chicken Tractor

Mycorrhizal Fungi

• How Mushrooms Will Save The World

“experiments conducted on a site owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation in Bellingham. Diesel oil had contaminated the site, which the mycoremediation team inoculated with strains of oyster mycelia that Stamets had collected from old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Two other bioremediation teams, one using bacteria, the other using engineered bacteria, were also given sections of the contaminated soil to test.
Lo and behold. After four weeks, oyster mushrooms up to 12 inches in diameter had formed on the mycoremediated soil. After eight weeks, 95 percent of the hydrocarbons had broken down, and the soil was deemed nontoxic and suitable for use in WSDOT highway landscaping.

By contrast, neither of the bioremediated sites showed significant changes. “It’s only hearsay,” says Bill Hyde, Stamets’ patent attorney, “but the bacterial remediation folks were crying because the [mycoremediation] worked so fast.

And that, says Stamets, was just the beginning of the end of the story. As the mushrooms rotted away, “fungus gnats” moved in to eat the spores. The gnats attracted other insects, which attracted birds, which brought in seeds.”

• Scientists Harness ‘good’ fungi to boost staple crops
• Fungi Science Experiment
• Fungi Perfecti Products – MycoGrow - This is the product line I plan to test. Please let me know your opinions on it!!
• Mycorrhizal Fungi
  • Increase
    • Root growth
    • Nutrient uptake
    • Bloom growth
    • Crop Yield
  • Reduce
    • Transplant shock
    • Drought Stress
    • Water Usage
    • Fertilizer Usage (25% less)
• Recommended book: Teaming with microbes: The Organic Gardner’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition