Shroomy, what the heck are ya doing now? Anyone who knows me, knows that I love growing things, bugs (meal worms), seeds, plant cuttings, veggies, flowers….. and yes fungi. I have a fig tree, banana tree, a lemon tree plus house plants and succulents, as well as the big garden and the greenhouse. talk about a passion to grow things.
I started to dig into the “dark” world of shrooms and discovered that they do not solely grow in the dark and perhaps I could try my hand at it. I have over the years experimented with some different varieties and I have done a tonne of research and I am confident that I can start growing shrooms on a regular basis.
Some of you may remember we did offer some pretty oyster mushrooms at the market a couple of years ago, but we were tapped when it came to growing space so in reality it had to take a back seat until things changed.
Fast forward some time to today. I purchased some professionally grown liquid mycelium, which took forever and a day to get here due to covid interfering with all aspects of mailing services. I can’t wait to see what is going to happen.
Growing mushrooms alongside of microgreens really does compliment each other as there are some similarities for growing and the rest well, I won’t bore you. I have an area set up in my germination room for the liquid mycelium to colonize my grain spawn so I better get going.
I was able to do some prep work, grain spawn, jars etc. So yesterday I went down into my still air room to inoculate my grain spawn. Very careful not to spread any unwanteds, I injected each jar, label it and placed it on my shelf in the germination room. So now is a waiting game. Wait to see if the mycelium cultures are happy and want to grow. If I am successful with the grain spawn then we will have a good variety of oysters, a colorful bunch and some others that I will leave as a surprise.
So stay tuned to an update or two as the white stuff grows into beautiful fungi. Hopefully if all goes well we might have some pretty mushrooms to sell when we are back at the market in a few weeks.
Happy farm girl
Our Old Island Market Farm 