The Farm – Its a bit shroomy around here

Shroomy, what the heck are ya doing now? Anyone who knows me, knows that I love growing things, bugs(mealworms), 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.

Not exactly sure when my first interest peaked in shrooms, we love to eat them…. oh wait, I remeber, Richters. Now I remember. I was going through their seed catalogue and I came across mushroom growing kits….. Peak… my curiosity was stung. I ordered two kits which seem to take a lifetime to get here and I had fun trying them out. That of course started my big interest in…. can someone like me grow mushrooms from scratch? Or what. I tried a few things like stem cloning, spore gathering. I am certain Rusty was thinking oh boy what is she up too now!! I am sure he has days when he thinks she’s gonna turn the house into a big inside garden, that’s probably his ongoing or occuring nightmare.

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 found guy in Montreal that sells kits and I decided hey what the heck lets see if I can grow these for our spot at the farmers market. I researched a bunch of stuff and voila I was able to grow some oyster mushrooms for the market. But then spring happened and that lead to summer and we were full on into our vegetable growing season. I cloned a few mushrooms in that time but mostly just for our consumption. But I was intrigued. I just didn’t have the room to do it, as I was pushing the limits of my microgreen growing room. So it took a back burner for a season or so.

Fast forward some time to today. I have done tonnes of research, tried several interesting things with shrooms and I have a permanent grow room with some space to spare so I’m gonna give it another go. I purchased some professionally grown liquid mycelium, which took forever and a day to get here do to covid interferring with all aspects of mailing services. As well I picked up a few things I will need to get growing…. and 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.

I don’t think its hard to grow them, but then again that’s just me. Others may look at it and go, hokey dina thats to involved or complicated or scary to try. Again, I said I love to grow. This is just another area of growth for me. A hobby that I absolutely love and glad that I could do here on the little red soil island that could.

So stay tuned to an update or two as I am either wildly successful or a bit of a failure. Just so you know I don’t look at my growing failures as failures, just learning experiences that make try different methods and ways to achieve a growing end…… see ya back at the old house, old farm or in my muddy boots♡ soon.

Happy farm girl