Hey there travelers, welcome back to another episode of Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, a chapter based review blog series! Today we’ll be going over a portion of chapter 4 since it’s quite a long chapter. If you’ve been following this blog or somehow just ran into our humble abode looking for sweet knowledge on this great book, you may have noticed that I didn’t do a writeup for chapter 3. The reason for that is because it’s a really short chapter on selecting a candidate for cultivation. Stamets gives a list of candidates which can be grown using methods explained in the book. I won’t list them all here but if you want more details, you can (and should) buy the book directly from his company.
With that said, let’s begin Chapter 4!
Natural Culture: Creating Mycological Landscapes
Natural culture is the cultivation of mushrooms outdoors, much like growing standard plants in your backyard, but constructing your mycological landscape will be much different. Designing a habitat that suits your mushroom’s needs involves emulating your selected species’ natural home. The problem, however, is that capturing a spot in nature is yet to be completely understood. Think about it: what exactly makes soil arable? Is it the moisture content, mineral content, aeration, electrical conductivity, pH, etc.? And even so, not every mushroom or plant prefers the same soil properties, and that’s not even mentioning the microbiota inhabiting the area.
So the next best option is to collect the knowledge of experienced mycological landscapers and apply it for yourself. Stamets calls this laissez-faire cultivation. Some important things to note when selecting your mushroom patch is the topography, sun exposure, and use of native woods and/or garden by-products. Now you might be thinking, why would I grow outside where mushrooms have to deal with natural forces? The main advantage of growing outdoors is minimum maintenance. Once you plant your mycelium, you can just wait until something grows.
Let’s say you decided to go with a woodland species on a 25 ft. x 25 ft. area in your yard. Your best bet is start with fresh materials to avoid competing molds or wild mushrooms that may be in old sawdust, chips, or other woody based materials. To ensure success, you use a high 25% spawn/substrate inoculation rate to avoid as much wild species to emerge along with your desired mushrooms. This should be a good first-time outdoor setup to which you can optimize as you grow.
That’s it for part 1 of Chapter 4. I want to stop here and take my time to show my appreciation for all of you that have been involved in our journey. We have some really cool stuff coming in the near future, like other products and more guides. We do this to let you know that we take great care of our products and we only want the highest quality stuff so you can have peace of mind. I believe that the content that we put out, the creativity that’s put in, and the values that we hold present itself in our products, which is of the best quality in the market. Thank you all so much for helping us go through this crazy ride, and I hope that the positive energy we put out in the universe will spread and raise us all up even if it’s just a tiny bit. I hope you all have a great week, and as always, safe journeys!