DIY Food, Medicine, Soil: There’s a Shroom for That

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Shawndra Miller

I am still thinking about the Radical Mycology Convergence, an incredibly enriching experience. My last post covered mainly big picture inspiration. Here’s some more hands-on stuff.

For someone who likes to pick wild berries and weeds, I’m terribly ignorant of wild mushrooms. I had no idea that I could eat the puffball mushrooms that occasionally pop up right here in urban yards (my own included).

By Nowa (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

In a workshop called “Foraging for Five Foolproof Fungi” we learned about morels, maitake, chicken of the woods, puffballs, and oyster mushrooms. I now desperately want to go mushroom hunting.

But fungi offer us way more than food. As anti-tumor agents and immune boosters, certain mushrooms are powerful medicine. I was excited to hear Peter McCoy speak about home cultivation techniques as a way to make these therapies more affordable.

He said that capsulated versions of medicinal mushrooms are simply mycelium grown on brown rice and dehydrated, with an expensive price tag slapped on them. He passed around a bag of myceliated grains—I think it was cooked rye that had been inoculated with a type of medicinal mushroom mycelium—that kind of looked like white popcorn all mashed together. This is home-cultivated medicine that you can eat (although it probably doesn’t taste like popcorn!)

Then there’s the way fungi can turn waste products into food. I blogged about an example of this last year—how coffee plantation waste, normally burned, can be fed to mushrooms.

A mushroom growing on coffee pulp in south-west Rwanda, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s mind-boggling that a nutrient-dense superfood has so few demands; oyster mushrooms, for example, are 30 percent protein and can grow on cardboard! Even citydwellers with limited time and space can grow myceliated grains as a healthy, immune-boosting food.

And as soil helpers, fungi are critical. Below the soil surface many species of fungi are working their magic. But one species in particular, known as wine caps, has double benefit: They fruit with a deliciously edible mushroom, and they build soil tilth. They’re known as the garden mushroom for the way they can be cultivated right alongside garden vegetables.

“Stropharia aurantiaca,” via Wikimedia Commons

The upshot: My spouse and I have moved from this feeling of “it’s too overwhelming to take on a new project” to “let’s grow some mushrooms!”

We came home with plug spawn for chicken of the woods, and I’ve talked to my arborist friend about sending some logs my way this winter. (He said he’d love a few bits of spawn in exchange, and I’m happy to share!) We also want to try growing some winecaps in our garden beds. And since these are both spring projects—and who wants to wait?—we’ll probably grow oysters indoors from a kit this winter.

Stay tuned for reports on our experiments!

Can’t get enough radical mycology? Check out this interview with Peter at Permaculture Voices—the link has several videos showing hands-on home cultivation steps as well.

Fungi Offer a Model and a Hope

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Shawndra Miller

Last weekend’s Radical Mycology Convergence was an eye-opener to the mystery and power of the fungus kingdom.

Did you know that fungi called endophytes live within plants, lending structure and resilience to the plant? “If we took away the fungal cells, we would see these scrawny, floppy little trees,” said Maia, one of the organizers.

Or that mycorrhizal fungi help plant roots take in nutrients in exchange for sugars? Trees in a forest benefit from this “silent stewardship role,” said Peter, an organizer and earlier contributor to this blog. He explained that the mycelium channels sugars to baby trees deep under the forest canopy to ensure their survival. Perhaps thinking of the “next seven spore generations.”

Or that only 10 percent of our cells is actually human—the rest bacterial and fungal? “We need to stop thinking of ourselves as singular organisms,” said Willoughby, another organizer. “We are walking ecosystems. We need to appreciate and nurture all these cells within us.”

From microscopic fungi, whose ecological role is often overlooked, to the 2500-acre honey mushroom in Oregon (largest living organism in the world), the message is clear: Fungi offer the human race a model and a hope.

Mycelium colonizing a log that’s been inoculated with shiitake mushroom spore.

What struck me about the Radical Mycology Convergence was the deep respect for nature in general and fungi in particular. Here is a movement that is not about exploitive, extractive approaches to a “natural resource,” but rather: working with fungi as allies for the betterment of all life. That includes cultivating mushrooms for food sovereignty, medicine, and remediation.

The promise of mycoremediation is great, and Radical Mycology is all about spreading the tools for home cultivation. But as Peter emphasized, we need to be humble in our explorations. We don’t want to just burst onto a contaminated scene and “throw oyster mushrooms at it” without first observing the healing already taking place, organically, through the wisdom of the fungi naturally present.

“Who are we to say we know more than nature does?” he said. The time for presumptive action is over. We must first watch, learn, observe.

I learned so much more, but here’s one last thing: When a mushroom gets ready to reproduce, it sends out spores. A spore germinates into a hypha, a filament. It’s one strand of what eventually, with luck, becomes a mycelial network.

But that hypha is only one cell thick, and needs a partner, a genetic match. It works invisibly, underground. You can’t see it. If it comes together with another hypha, that’s when mycelium begins to branch in all directions through its environment. And finally, when conditions are right, it makes a beautiful fruiting body, a mushroom.

Cultivation workshop at the Radical Mycology Convergence (an event that one organizer likened to “the fruiting body of a mycelial network.”)

A fitting metaphor for social change work, which is not always visible to the mainstream.

We may feel like we’re laboring in the dark, but when we connect with others—even starting with just one!—the network that results can produce something nourishing and healthy, a powerful gift that seems to show up “overnight.”

A Little Help from the Fungus Kingdom

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Shawndra Miller

Yesterday I went on a quest for the fabled fungus that’s been mopping up petrochemicals from a food co-op’s parking lot. Olympia Food Co-op‘s eastside store was the place. I timed my visit just right, happening upon a crew of landscapers working the butterfly and bird garden.

The grounds of this food co-op include a sweet garden meant to attract pollinators.

Outside the food co-op is a sweet garden meant to attract pollinators (and people).

Sarika, the co-op’s landscape coordinator, jumped at the chance to tell me about the project. The mycoremediation began five years ago in partnership with Olympia Mycelial Network. Oyster mushrooms are able to digest petrochemicals into harmless compounds. So the drainage ditch of the parking lot contains several burlap bags full of oyster mushroom mycelium.

Bags filled with oyster mushroom mycelium.

The idea is to filter the oil before it hits the drain down by the sidewalk.

Ever wonder where the runoff disappears to when it enters a drain like this?

I also met Brittany and Jordan, two young Louisiana-born “WWOOFers” volunteering with Sarika. They are traveling around the country with another friend, exploring farming innovations and learning how they can be of use to our beautiful planet. (Check out their adventures at Traveling Tripod.)

Jordan, Sarika, and Brittany

Brittany waxed eloquent about the role of mushrooms—this critical work is all about ensuring “clean water for everyone.”

Signage showing the overview of the mycoremediation

Signage showing an overview of the fungi’s work

Having been in the Pacific Northwest for almost a month, I’m beginning to grasp the extreme sensitivity of Puget Sound. This project represents just one small but significant effort to right the wrongs of our polluting ways.

Hood Canal, a basin of Puget Sound, as seen from Potlatch Beach on a moody day.

The possibilities are staggering. Peter McCoy, who last year contributed a guest post about radical mycology, first told me about this project over a year ago. Finally seeing those humble mushroom bags doing their work brought tears to my eyes.

Sarika is looking into funding to pursue farther-reaching remediation. And the Radical Mycology Collective, of which Olympia Mycelial Network is a part, is launching its fall tour today. I can’t wait till the big Radical Mycology Convergence, taking place in Orangeville, IL this October!