Turn Coffee Grounds into Gourmet Mushrooms

Oyster mushroom mycelium loves coffee grounds .... and coffee filters ... and tea leaves. I put some moistened shredded paper in the bottom of a small bucket. To that i add a handful of oyster mushroom spawn and mix it up. We put the bucket in the cabinet under the sink. Each morning Robin puts her used coffee grounds and filter into the bucket. We also add tea leaves when we make a pitcher of iced tea which is about every other day. It takes 2-3 weeks to fill up a small bucket. By the time it is full the mycelium has run up to about the 3rd layer from the top.
When a bucket is full we put it on the screen porch and start another bucket. It took about 3 more weeks for the mycelium to completely colonize the bucket and start producing mushrooms. We expect to harvest several flushes of mushrooms from the bucket. After that we can dump the mass out of the bucket and use the mycelium to start more buckets.
We bought the bucket from Happy Donuts (used to contain donut glaze) for $1.00 We paid about $30.00 for a bag of mushroom spawn from Mushroom Mountain. We can start about 100 buckets from a bag so that cost is $0.30. Total cost $1.30. We will get at least $5.00 worth of mushrooms. Not a bad profit from a waste product.
I will update you on the actual amount of mushrooms we can harvest from a bucket.

An Answer to a Question about Mushrooms

Country Girl asked the following question about mushrooms-

We have millions of mushrooms on our land but I have yet to try (or dare) and identify them. I am curious if it is easier to learn to identify or be safe and plant your own.

Here is my take on that.First thing is you don't have to be able to identify all the mushrooms you see, only the ones that are good to eat. In any particular region of the country there are only a few and they usually have very distinct features making them pretty easy to identify. I suggest getting involved with a local mushroom club, befriending the mycologist professor at your local land grant university or finding someone nearby who knows what good edibles are native to your area.
I am fascinated by fungi and like to try to identify the ones i find. Believe me, it is not easy to do. I have 5 mushroom I.D. books but there are so many different mushrooms out there that i rarely find the ones i've collected in my books. Also there is much variability in the appearance of an individual within a species so the picture in the book may or may not resemble the specimen i happened to collect.
Some of the best edible mushrooms we are not able to cultivate, particularly the mycorrhizal species such as chanterelles (top photo). Mycorrhizal mushrooms live in symbiosis with the roots of specific tree species. The good thing about them is they grow in association with living trees so they can be found year after year in the same place. A decay mushroom such as the oyster mushroom (bottom photo) disappears once it has consumed all the carbon from the dead tree it colonizes so you have to keep hunting for new locations as the old ones disappear.
So if your goal is cultivate a crop that provides you with high quality protein and huge health benefits by all means grow your own. I highly recommend Paul Stamets book Mycelium Running as a resource for learning how to grow your own.

The Mushroom Plot Thickens

Last Sunday Robin, Holly and I drilled and plugged 1100 dowels of mushroom spawn into sweet gum logs given to us by our fabulous neighbors Rodney and Charlie. Our potential for future mushrooms is steadily increasing. We now have shitake, lions mane and oyster mushroom mycelium gobbling up some wood getting primed to pop out some 'shrooms. We still have 100 more lions mane dowels and 100 reishi dowls to go.

Run mycelium run!

"SHROOMS & MATERS

I went to the community garden today to harvest the last of the tomatos before the first frost comes tonight or tomorrow night. I got about 10 pounds in various stages of ripeness. Some of the green ones we'll fry up and some that are closer to ripe i'll wrap in newspaper and let ripen in the dark.
The excitement of the day though was discovering a big patch of oyster mushrooms. That was totally unexpected. I'd found flushes of them several times this year in the same place growing on the stump of a pawlonia tree that was cut down 3 years ago when we had an old house demolished to make room to expand the garden.
We'll be eating well for the next few days.
That just increased my excitement about going to Washington state next week to learn how to cultivate mushrooms from Paul Stamets and his crew at Fungi Perfecti.

Mushroom Futures

We had to have a tulip poplar tree removed a couple of weeks ago after some large branches had been broken out of it in a storm. I was staring at the stump about a week later when the bright idea came to me to inoculate it with oyster mushroom spawn.I hopped on Fungi Perfecti's web site and placed my order.
The sawdust spawn arrived a couple of days ago. The past 2 days it has rained so the stump is good and moist, perfect for inoculation. The first step was to drill 13/16" holes about an 1 1/2" deep around the perimeter of the stump approximately 3" apart. ( why a 13/16" hole instead of 7/8" or 3/4" you might be wondering. Well because that is the size drill bit i happened to have on hand). I drilled 2 rows of holes then i stuffed each hole with clumps of sawdust which were the most heavily colonized with mycelia. Next i watered the spawn with rainwater we collected yesterday in our new rain barrels. Then i soaked cardboard in rainwater, cut it to fit the stump and laid it over the top. The cardboard will keep the spawn moist and since mycelia loves to eat cardboard it will become myceliated as well. Finally i covered the cardboard with wet excelsior the keep the cardboard moist. Excelsior is shredded wood that comes to us as packing material around pottery that we bring in to sell at the Urban Gardener. We save it and use it as mulch in the community garden.
Now all we have to do is wait for the fungi to consume the tree trunk and , when conditions are right we hope we'll get lots of delicious, nutritious oyster mushrooms.
When will that be? I don't know. Maybe next spring, maybe 2 years from now, maybe never. It is worth the investment i think.