Nanabush Food Forest Stories — mushrooms

We were fortunate to return to the site of a previous year's discovery to find a nice 2016 harvest of maitake mushrooms.  It was a pleasant surprise given the drought and heat of the summer.   Not only do these mushrooms taste delicious, but they also pack a nutritional and medicinal punch (with 25% protein, loads of B-vitamins, glucose moderating and anti-tumour effects).

It's that time of year again in the food forest, where temperatures and humidity hit just the right point to cause a flush of spring mushrooms.  So exciting!  Shiitake logs are in full flush, as the newly planted vegetables establish themselves in the soil and fruits and nuts develop on the trees and bushes.  We've got some blue, pink and pearl oyster mushrooms queuing up over the next few months, along with some reishi logs established last year which we hope will produce their first flush this fall. 

If you have ever gone wild mushroom foraging, you are probably aware that these wild treasures have their seasons.  Many favourites flourish in rainy autumn temperatures.  However, one of the earliest mushrooms is a delectable spring mushroom known as the Black Morel mushroom.  Hunting morels in the wild takes an extremely keen eye.  They are often overlooked, because they are so well camouflaged into their environment.  Animals like to eat them and no doubt hunt them out partly by smell.     To take the guesswork out of the hunt, we have just established several black morel patches in our...

Will this winter ever end? While we wait for the snow to melt (and collect some tree sap for a few jars of syrup), we have yet a few more successes with some additional varieties of mushrooms. One of the gardens most impressive mushroom goes by several names, but we call it King Stropharia. This winter’s indoor culture yielded some nice sized mushrooms, but in the great outdoors, as a companion and collaborator with your sweet corn, this mushroom can grow to have a cap that is 18″ in diameter! Now that is a lot of mushroom!  

With the snow falling outside, its a good time to bring focus to some indoor mushroom cultivation. We’ve got some lovely pearl oyster mushrooms to enjoy! It’s important to stay on top of the oyster mushrooms, to harvest them before they begin to sporulate. From the time the mushroom begins to form on the growing media (straw in our case), its only a matter of days before its harvest time. With the right temperature, humidity and light levels, you end up with a really nice flush of mushrooms! Yay!