Mushroom Workshop

On Saturday I drove out to Langey and participated in a shitake and oyster mushroom growing workshop with Bill Chalmers who runs  Western Biological. For three hours myself and a small group of people (mostly from East Van) hung out in and around Bill’s workshop where he taught us the mushroom lifecycle, talked about the process of culturing (he gives a 2-day intensive workshop  on this subject), and then showed us the art of drilling into somewhat fresh alder logs to innoculate with mushroom spores. Above is a photograph of my morning’s efforts, plus I came home with plenty more prepared material to insert into more logs – if only I can find some! Green alder, cut within the last two months – anyone got some?

In any case, these logs are going to live on the north side of the house within the shade garden I am building on that spot beside my worm composter. Shaded a great deal of the time, nice and moist…. and if I make sure they don’t dry out over the years, I should be able to get several fruit harvests from just these two logs. I’d like to put a few more logs down if I can find them, but I’m not holding my breath on that. Will document how these work out here – but can highly recommend the basic workshop Bill gives on this subject. He is incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and gives a good inexpensive introduction to mushroom cultivation. You can also buy starter kits from Bill when he has them made up. He’s a little hard to track down because he doesn’t have much of an internet presence, so if you are interested, please leave a comment and I can email you his contact info.