Monday, March 17, 2008

Shrooms, Dude

Mark gave Kate a shiitake mushroom growing kit for her birthday last week. This is exciting to us because we are nerds, but also because we've been considering joining the NJ Mycological Association, or at least checking out a foraging event at one of the nearby parks. We have a couple of friends who are becoming increasingly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about foraging for mushrooms, but of course they live on the West Coast.

We needed some logs for the mushrooms to grow in, so Mark and Kate's dad enthusiastically sawed off a big limb from the oak tree in our front yard. We also found a guy in Andover who runs a sawmill and gave us pieces of some logs he couldn't use, so we'll see how that works. The sawmill guy also happens to sell certified organic compost and topsoil (I guess you could call him a "dirt merchant") at a fair price, so we took some of that as well.

So last night Mark drilled hundreds of little holes in the wood, and tonight Kate gets to fill them with little mushroom capsules and hot wax and see what happens.

2 comments:

Michaela said...

Todd just bought a book on cultivating mushrooms! He figures that since we don't have as a big of a gardening space anymore, he might as well use the garage to grow mushrooms.

Of course, I am not opposed.

Kate said...

You should try it! We can run concurrent experiments.