PODCAST： Who Knew Growing Mushrooms was this EASY! (Pantry Chat with Chris Gilmour)

Hey you guys welcome to this week's edition of the pantry chat food for thought today I have a special guest and we're going to be talking about growing Mushrooms at home. This is something josh and I have wanted to get into for years And we've done a little bit of it. We've done some garden mushrooms, but we have not gotten any further than that So we're really excited About learning more about it. So today we have Chris gilmore with us and we're going to be talking all about growing mushrooms at home, so Here we go. Chris. Welcome Hey, so nice to be here. This is fun. I love this. Yeah Yeah, this is a great one I think it's something that people are looking at more and more as the word has gotten out that growing mushrooms is maybe not as Hard as we all thought it might have been Yeah, and it really I mean to me as a you know, kind of a small scale modern homesteader It just makes sense for so many reasons like it really has been a game changer on our little homestead. So So we've been growing wine caps for the last few years and we've just been doing it in our garden beds like right in the rows because we already use a lot of compost and then we mulch our walkways with Wood chips and so they're just super happy and they grow all over the place at this point I've got more wine caps than I could ever actually consume um And so I got really interested in the idea of some of these garden mushrooms That we could just do in the garden rows and I tried. Um, what do they call them almond portabellas? Which are the agaricus this last year and I never got them to actually do anything So i'm like, ah, maybe i'll try it again We'll see but i'm really excited about moving even outside of just those garden mushrooms that you can grow in your garden rows And uh getting into some more so i'm i'm excited about today's topic. It's going to be a lot of fun Um, but first why don't you tell us a little bit about your story and how you got started In like how did you get here where you're growing mushrooms and teaching people about growing mushrooms? Sure. Yeah Um, so my wife and I we've been together a little over 20 years now my wife laura and when we were in our early 20s We basically went on a farm tour Uh, so when it worked on various organic farms kind of all over really all over north america canada and the united states And I landed on a farm on the west coast called uh, seven raven farms out on salt spring island. We're up in canada Um, and I did uh, basically kind of like an apprenticeship there for a whole season or like a garden internship Uh, and that was my first exposure to both foraging and growing mushrooms So we had a market garden there, uh, but we also had an eco forestry operation um, so we would you know, it was a very small like 40 acre property and Uh, this guy made a significant amount of money from 40 acres of woods Which is actually almost unheard of in the forestry world So that was actually what kind of called me to that place But one neat layer element of that was is after we went into selectively cut trees He had a guy that would come in and inoculate the stumps right in the forest with mushroom mycelium And they were growing edible and medicinal mushrooms right in the forest And then we were also growing them in the garden and he had this amazing valley that was full of oyster mushrooms Uh, and we had a market garden there, but we would actually go and forage oyster mushrooms for our csa boxes So that was kind of my first foray into both growing and foraging mushrooms Uh, and then, you know kind of jump ahead a decade my wife and I with laura We bought our little homestead, uh up here in canada Um, and one of the first things that we got into doing was doing mushroom logs. So doing shiitake mushroom logs Um, and I really quickly realized like wow like out of everything that we grow on the homestead This feels like one of the best exchanges of energy like as far as like calories put in and calories that we get back Uh, we were really really impressed. Um, so we you know, I just got super nerdy about it You know and uh started doing all kinds of experiments started playing around with growing species indoors outdoors different techniques And then my wife, you know, I do a fair bit of foraging as well But my wife really went down the uh, the foraging rabbit hole Uh, so she's become incredibly knowledgeable as a forager, you know foraging walks now mushroom walks Um, and then i've kind of gone more down that we both kind of know both elements But as I said, laura's really kind of gone down the foraging route for mushrooms and she's actually a professional forager runs a foraging business Um, so it makes sense. She'd go that way and then I kind of went down the uh, the growing route Um, which is uh, yeah, yeah kind of what I teach now We do workshops through wild bespoke. That's our foraging business there on on both growing and foraging mushrooms today So that is amazing, you know something that I just learned in this last year at least here for us in Idaho in the united states that there are actually Certifications for mushroom foragers here. I don't know if that's true in canada, but um, but a local restaurant was featuring these wild mushrooms and they were You know brought in the mushroom forager actually and she was talking about all the certification levels She had to go through in order to be able to safely Like sell these to restaurants after she had forged them for herself And so it's really fascinating how deep you can go into that world But it is a product that is like people want that restaurants want that now It's it's a very desirable product even on kind of the professional side So that's a very fascinating that she's doing absolutely if people are thinking cash crops, you know Mushrooms are actually again, you know a pretty uh, potentially a lucrative crop to grow, you know And and that's something that I think a lot of homesteaders are always looking for is like how do I make my land Profitable so that I can spend more time on the land and not have to spend so much time going out to work So I think that's a really good element to bring in now something that you're really passionate about is building healthy communities um and Just curious as we're chatting a little bit before we dive totally into the main subject Like how do mushrooms play into that because my guess is that they actually do most things on the homestead can right? How do mushrooms play into healthy communities? Talk about ecological communities or human communities are all above when you when you raise that question Yeah, well on your website you talk about having a passion for healthy community building And so yeah, so i'm you know Curious how the mushroom foraging plays into that Yeah, awesome um, you know, I I look at community kind of in a broad way because there is there's the ecological communities and you know, The more I learn about my mycelium the more fascinated I play with their ecological role, you know, just in the earth's ecology um, you know, um, they're One of the main organisms that actually like breaks down matter So things like when a tree dies in the forest and it's hard, you know mycelium plays an essential role in recycling that into soil and making the Uh, basically the nutrients and all the other foods available to all the other organisms, you know, whether it's bacteria whether it's insects Uh, and then the mycelium itself becomes super important food for the organisms too, you know, uh insects bugs Uh, even mammals and squirrels and birds are all coming and eating that So mycelium is foundational to the community if you think about the web of life um, and then beyond that it's become a really amazing opportunity to bridge with our community and think about local kind of food security and Self-reliance because you can grow such a small amount in a or sorry large amount in a very small space Uh, it's a very efficient one, you know from a local food security perspective Uh, and then of course, you know that creates the opportunity to kind of rally around it So where we live, you know, I start we sort of the kind of There weren't many people doing it in our region when we first started going And of course people will get out you do questions. What's this all about? So one of our favorite ways to grow is shiitakes on logs There is a bit of upfront work, you know, because we're actually going to go out we're going to harvest Green trees from the forest. We're going to cut them to length. Uh, we're going to set up all the equipment We're going to drill them We'll maybe get into that later But one of the first activities that happened when we started first people were asking us about what's this all about? And two it's like wow This is a lot of labor as two people if we're going to do it any kind of quantity So we actually started throwing these community parties Um where people would come along and basically learn and be like hey you show up for the day You help us get this done. You go home with a log at the end of the day Um, and so we're actually building community while spreading the skill set that increases kind of local food resilience and local food security yeah, that is so important, um, and I love the way you tie the ecological community into the human community too because uh, you know For us for josh and I here on the homestead. We talk a lot about systems and how the systems interconnect with each other And that's kind of that same concept that you know Your garden should be feeding into other parts of your homestead Your barn and your your animal system should be feeding into other parts of the homestead and in the same way Our household should be feeding into the community at large and vice versa And so yeah, it's just a such a beautiful picture So many homesteaders feel isolated and this is not just post-covid They just or maybe they feel like they're the only people who are doing what they're doing, right? And so it's an amazing way to bring um People together. I know when we first got to north. Idaho We um being from very dry region of california. We were not at all clued in to mushroom foraging and up up here Uh, you know the morel mushroom hunting is like a sacred ritual almost in the spring Like it becomes a really big deal up here and so I remember the first time we were here in the spring and We we went by josh and I drove by the street corner where The um whole field had been burned the year before And there were all these people and they were slowly walking around looking at their feet And we were like we were so clueless. We were really naive, you know, and we're like, oh my gosh Like what happened here? Was this a is this a religious ceremony? Like we don't know these people look like they're walking around meditating or something come to find out They're all kicking around looking for morel mushrooms, you know And um, but there was a whole field of them like there were people everywhere was stopping and people were greeting each other and they were saying hi and so You know as you get out there and you get to these spots where like there's community foraging going on It really does build this community aspect if you get to know other people who are doing what you're doing And then you end up with mushrooming buddies and you know foraging buddies and it really creates a whole nother community life Outside of just your own homestead So I just really wanted to bring that out and bring that to the front about what you're doing is that you know Sometimes these things don't have to be solitary and all alone like it feels like Yeah, and I just spoke to you know, the growing aspect I mean people love the mushroom work party in the spring, you know coming and doing the logs Uh, but foraging, you know, we've met so many cool people out foraging, you know Because what you find is there's there's spots and habitats that are associated with different species, you know Um, so and the mushroom foragers, you know, that's a small even though it's growing quickly It's still relatively a small kind of niche world So once you start to establish where the good habitat spots are inevitably You're gonna bump into other foragers and you've got something in common and now you're making new friends And um, so we've met lots of interesting folks when we're out foraging or people that just come up and say hey What are you doing? And then strike up a cool conversation. So there's definitely a community building component around the foraging Um, and can I just touch on one more piece on uh on systems before you go in? Uh popped into my mind there Uh, so as far as thinking about cyclical loops on the homestead and kind of closing them things, you know Mushrooms have been phenomenal for that as well So when we grow our mushrooms indoors in the winter time, you know, one of my favorites you're not producing a lot this way But it's super fun. It's a great project with kids, uh as we'll grow in spent coffee grounds Uh, literally just in mason jars, you know in the kitchen, we'll grow some mushrooms there I also grow with straw in bags But the so the first round, you know, we take a a product That's a waste product from our coffee the grounds and you know, we could put that right into the compost But now we put it into a mason jar and we inoculate it with mycelium Then we get you know, two or three flushes of mushrooms off that that coffee ground is now super charged with this super potent rich mycelium Um, so that coffee has actually become a better nutrient than it was before So we could just put that into the compost but our next step is we actually go to our vermicomposter So our worm composter and we feed the mushroom mycelium coffee grounds to the worms The worms absolutely love it and you know um You think about like the super food like kind of buzzwords that are going around like I swear like I think coffee ground mycelium is A super food, you know You can sell it for a ton of money for the worms if they had if they had money to buy it with you know So now we're feeding that to the worms who now consume it which that actually causes them to create even better Fertilizer and now we use that to water our starts in the springtime, right? Our burma that's kind of our main fertilizer when we're getting vegetables going is the castings from the worms Which I actually think is super charged because they're eating the mycelium from the speck mushroom So there's just kind of a cool example of how you can kind of tie these things in and make them cyclical In your system as well, right? Oh, yeah, I absolutely love that That's something josh would get super excited about so he would he would be out there right now getting his worms and his mushrooms going If he heard that so So yeah That might be in our future because that is really neat and it's a great way to like you said just keep reusing the same Thing but making it better and better which is really what our goal is with working with our land, right? As we're working on our land We want to be improving it the whole way along leaving it more fertile in better shape better condition as when we leave it And that's just a great way to do that turning something that people are dumping in the trash Don't throw your coffee grounds in the trash. Don't do it. They're too bad Yeah, when we grow on straw, you know, you can literally take that straw and go use it for mulch afterwards, too, right? Yeah, and you know, it's in most conditions, you know The mushrooms probably aren't going to start growing again when you go and mulch your bed with it You know in some conditions they actually could a lot of conditions they don't but you know If you're going to be laying down straw anyways You know as a garden mulch either to as a weed barrier or to build soil If you've inoculated with mycelium, you've got a few flushes of food and then you go mulch with it Uh one you're just doing more uh with less and then two I really believe you're adding more nutrients to that soil by putting that that straw down that's laid with the mycelium in the first place Right, that is amazing. Yeah, that is really neat Good. Well speaking of supercharging things All you have to do is go to you know Pinterest or instagram and scroll a little bit and you're bound to find some new mushroom coffee or something like that that is kind of all the rage at the moment because people are realizing how Good mushrooms really are for your health or they're kind of coming back to the forefront I think we've always known that they can be really good. But um You know the downside of them is when you go and buy them in those nice little packages. They are so expensive Even going to your grocery store and getting good quality or your farmer's market getting good quality Mushrooms that have been grown by somebody else or foraged by somebody else is just incredibly expensive Um, but the good news is is you can actually grow a lot at home and that's so exciting So take us through some of the different mushrooms that you can grow at home and what their main benefits are sure um, you know when people are starting out so maybe even Even if I was to back up one step as far as growing techniques, you know You're you're either going to grow indoors or you're going to grow outdoors Okay, and then there's a few different techniques that you might use with each one and then different techniques are kind of connected to different Species. All right. Um, so maybe i'll start with outdoor growing. Um for for all the gardeners in the crowd tonight Um, so outdoors, you know, there's there's a ton of mushrooms you could grow but not all mushrooms are Um equal as far as their ease of growing Um, so probably two of the easiest ones to start with if you're going to grow in beds winecaps are King strafaria mushrooms and and the reason they're often easier is because they just have a very The perfect word but like an aggressive mycelium meaning they'll like out compete other native myceliums that are in the habitat um, and they're less prone to like things like bacteria and molds and stuff getting in there because they're just uh, Such an aggressive mycelium some of the slower growing myceliums Um are really amazing, you know have all kinds of medicinal benefits But if you don't have every little piece perfectly tweaked they can actually be a lot more a lot more challenging to grow So probably the first thing i'd share with folks, you know, if you're just getting started, uh oyster mushrooms Uh wine cap mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms on logs are probably three of the best starting points Um that I often recommend. Um Because both the oysters and the wine caps are very fast growing mycelium very aggressive I always say, you know You can do a few things wrong when you're growing wine caps and oysters and still have success You can do a lot of like for example something like uh, mitake mushrooms, you know Um or even lion's mane for that matter, you know You can do a lot of things right and still have it go wrong when you're growing some of those other species Oysters and white caps you can do a bunch of stuff wrong and still have it go right and get a good flush on Um, so those are really good starting species. Uh shiitakes. Um Are maybe a little bit harder if you're going to be growing them indoors, but outdoors on logs They're actually a great species to start with as well. Um Yeah, so if you're inoculating into into fresh wood, uh, we have shiitake logs that have been fruiting for literally nine years So we inoculated them once Uh, so it is, you know, it is a bit of initial work up front to actually harvest the logs cut them You know, you know take us we'll spend about two days a year inoculating mushrooms But the difference is you know I spend way more than two days on my tomatoes every year And I get one harvest at the end of the year and then I have a ton of work after I harvest it still I spend two days a year on my shiitakes and they produce for nine more years Afterwards and I'd say six to nine years depending on the growing conditions of the species that you're growing on there um That that's amazing that I did not know that they went that long Before you move on really quickly cover what each of those mushrooms are good for for the some of us who are just kind of Like mushrooms or mushrooms, um, you know, are they medicinal are they edible for each of those three varieties? You just mentioned? Yeah, um, I think of I mean all three of them are edibles and basically all the mushrooms We're going to be talking about are edibles. Um, and they all have here's the thing with mushroom medicine It's quite complex when you get into it. Uh, there's a really good book It's actually called if you know, somebody wants just like a clear diagram of like this mushroom has these properties There's a book called fungal pharmacy uh, and in the back of it, it actually has tables and it's literally like, you know, like diabetes and anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory and Um and the more um, you know I'll preface this by saying I don't always talk a lot about so i've spent a ton of time learning and reading about You know kind of value mushrooms. I'm always cautious sharing Uh, i'm gonna steal a line from a guy tim ferris He's kind of a famous guy on the internet, but he always says i'm i'm i'm not a doctor I don't pretend to be one on the internet. So i'm gonna say that right now So i'm always cautious to just throw out these broad words when it comes to medicinal mushrooms Um because I I tend to believe that health is maybe a little bit more complex to just like this mushroom does this thing um And you know, that's a whole nother conversation or a whole nother podcast there Uh, but in general i'd say, you know, a lot of the species that we're talking about are you know, they're all higher in antioxidants Uh, most of them have some degree of anti-inflammatory properties There's tons of research and how they can be supportive with um as like adaptogens Um and just helping your body regulate um You know various different things, um, you know There's tons of research coming out there on the value of mushrooms even in in cancer Uh, whether it's as a preventative, um through probably roles and mechanisms such as its antioxidant properties such as its anti-inflammatory properties Uh, but even really fascinating research coming out how mushrooms can even be supportive to somebody going through traditional Uh chemo treatments for cancer and stuff, you know So you're going through the modern treatment system and your mushrooms because of their adaptogenic properties are actually helping you buffer Say the radiation you're getting from your chemo Um, so, you know as general properties i'd say they hold all kinds of wonderful things like that Um, you know shiitakes and oysters are probably a little bit more on the edible side You know, we don't usually think of I mean they have all kinds of Benefits, but they're not usually the ones that come to mind when we start talking about dismal We often think about like lion's mane for your brain or you know, things like reishi, you know Reishi is probably one of the most well-researched medicinal Uh mushrooms out there like literally it's been used in asia for like thousands of years And documented for thousands of years, you know, so incredible bodies of literature on the medicinal values of things like reishi You know new ones like chaga and turkey tail coming up or I shouldn't say new mushrooms But there's a lot more research. Those are ones that are kind of becoming new as far as being trendy mushrooms Um, so those are kind of some of the mushrooms I start thinking about when we go more into the medicinal realm of mushrooms um, so shiitake oysters, uh definitely have medicinal value but um We often put them a little bit more in the edible category than the medicinal category if that makes sense Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that sounds good. Um, one of the things that I have found is really fascinating I don't know if this is true of all mushrooms, but I think that the research is coming out With the wine caps is their ability to actually absorb vitamin d And then to hold on to it so that if you consume them then later in the winter When you're not getting as much sunshine that you're actually essentially taking like a vitamin d supplement by consuming them or something similar um, you know, so there's a lot of really interesting properties that Mushrooms may hold answers for as we're trying to do more things ourself and be a little more self-sufficient absolutely, you know and um So shiitakes absolutely as well. So we'll actually when we harvest our shiitakes fresh We'll actually set them in the sun for a little while before we actually process them And they will literally absorb extra vitamin d out of the sun there or at least synthesize and create extra vitamin d Um just by leaving them in the sun for longer upon harvesting Um, and you know an interesting just story on that to actually speak to how potent that is a few years ago This is probably about three years ago Um, I got some blood work done and it was in the winter time and I had almost toxic levels of vitamin d in my system Yeah, most people in north america are actually have a shortage of vitamin d and what I realized I so up until that point I would usually take a vitamin d supplement in the winter and then i'd go off it in the summer um And i'd never really got my blood checked before while I was doing it So sure enough this one year I went to go get my blood checked I was just taking a regular vitamin d supplement exactly what it said on the label and I had almost borderline toxic level of the vitamin d And in chatting with the the doctor we basically realized that because I was consuming so many mushrooms already I had no need for that vitamin d supplement I was naturally getting way more or not way more than I need but I had enough So I actually stopped eating mushrooms for three months and stopped the vitamin d like I had to go off of everything because vitamin d Actually takes a while to actually get out of your flesh out of your system like it's cumulative It's not like you know vitamin c you can flush out in 24 hours, right vitamin d actually sits in In your body for a long time, uh went back three months later and tested my vitamin d level to come back down Uh started just eating mushrooms and not taking any vitamin d supplement anymore. And now I have a very healthy Uh level of vitamin d right through the winter Um, so I no longer need that vitamin d supplement because of my my mushroom consumption which is kind of cool Yeah, that's really fascinating to me because while I don't live as far north as you do. I think you're up in ontario Um, you know here in north. Idaho. We get long dark winters also So I definitely am in that needing to supplement with vitamin d category and I get my work my blood work done also regularly to check that and i'm like It takes a lot of supplementation for me to get up to healthy levels on vitamin d during the midwinter time And that's not cheap either right? There's another way you're saving money on the homestead. Yeah, exactly Well, and you know, you know, it's got to be more bioavailable than anything you're taking out of a capsule So I love that. That's really cool. Okay, so I kind of sidetracked you a little bit You were working on outdoor mushrooms and growing them. And so let's move on from there if uh, if you were looking at Indoor mushrooms, is that where you would go next? Yeah, I mean we can either talk a little bit about the process of growing outdoors Or we could get into indoor mushrooms. Where would you like to go next? No, let's hang with the outdoor mushrooms then talk about some of the processes. Awesome Yeah, well like growing like things like wine caps in garden beds Like you said that that's relatively straightforward because they're they're a very aggressive mycelium. Um, you know, so Uh, basically all mushrooms, um need moisture. That's probably your most important thing whether you're growing indoors or outdoors. They need a high humidity Um, so the substrate substrate's the word we use for kind of like whatever we're going to grow our mushrooms in Um, so generally you want them in a in a place where that substrate is going to stay moist Um, so that's an important thing to know now wine caps Actually the reason you can get away with them in garden beds and stuff Even though they dry out a little bit. There's such an aggressive mycelium. It's such an easy mushroom They're one of the few that can actually tolerate a little bit of sunlight And tolerate drying out a little bit Uh, most other mushrooms would not be able to grow in the garden path in your garden Now what we do with our wine caps is we'll often grow them under perennial crops or under our squash beds Uh, particularly around our squash bed because the squash grows so fast Uh, and then their leaves are so big that they actually create that bit of shade Uh and increase the moisture in the mulch underneath it growing in Uh, we also have a big patch of like elderberries and blueberries Um, so we grow wine caps underneath our elderberries and blueberries again because they have that shade cover from above them, right? Um, but yeah, just just know that so moisture content is really really important in the soil, uh mushrooms, uh, Contrary to popular belief. They actually do need light a lot of people. There's a misconception that mushrooms are grown in the dark There's a handful of species that are but most of them actually need light but not direct sunlight, right? Um, so that's another important factor to just understand there what mushrooms kind of need So you can go in garden beds, you know, you're growing in straw or in wood chips So basically you're gonna take your straw you want clean straw that's nice and dry Um, you know, it's not that doesn't have you don't want a straw bill that for example It's been sitting out in a field for a month, uh, and it's been getting rained on, right? So you're getting nice clean straw nice and dry or you're getting nice freshly Chipped wood chips and then you literally just go and buy a kit from the store You can break it up. You can put some of the mycelium into the the straw there, you know Sometimes i'll throw down even a couple little pieces of cardboard in there Um, because it'll start to colonize that cardboard a little faster You can get away with it without it, but the cardboard helps kind of give it a kick start So that that one's fairly straightforward Um beyond that we get into growing in logs and stuff like that and again, it's you know It's it's not rocket science, but there are definitely little tricks to increasing it But the essence of it is is I need green wood. First of all, uh, so healthy trees So if you this is probably the number one question I get for log growing You're like, oh a tree came down in my backyard. Can I inoculate it with mushrooms? And if the tree came down in your backyard There's a good chance it came down because there's already a fungus in it That's broken down the quality of the wood and allowed it to break in the first place Now if you get a really good windstorm and it actually breaks off a healthy branch Absolutely, you can probably inoculate it But if it fell down for any other reason, you know If it's got woodpecker holes in it if it's got insect holes in it If it came down naturally you probably it's already got other competing mycelium in it unless it's not going to work So usually we're thinning healthy branches Now if you don't have access to a forest where you can harvest get to know the local arborist, right? Or even just drive around the neighborhood, you know, even for somebody that lives in the city Uh, you know drive around and look for where the arborists are taking down those big trees because usually those canopies are just getting dragged Off to get chipped and sometimes those logs in the canopy are actually the perfect size, you know, three inches four inches five inches Uh canopy logs are great size for inoculating mushrooms, right? Um, so you basically get your medium which is going to be your log Um, and then you're going to buy your spawn which is usually sawdust that's been inoculated with the mycelium of choice And I recommend shiitake for getting started And then you're going to drill holes in it and then you basically plug the spawn into the holes you seal it up with wax uh, and then you're going to let them sit and um Uh, the mycelium basically will eat away at the wood So shiitake logs one thing that's interesting it can take anywhere from 8 to 24 months Before you get your first flush of mushrooms off Uh, it's kind of like more like planting, you know Like a blueberry bush or something where you're not going to get any food the first couple of years Uh, but then once it starts producing it's incredibly prolific, right? Um, yeah. Well, and if you're going to get fruit for up to like nine years and plus then it's worth the wait, isn't it? Worth the wait there. Yeah. Yeah So that's kind of the essence of growing outdoors Um, and then of course you can grow all kinds of other species like I grow lion's mane outdoors, you know Which is one of the most, uh, well researched mushrooms around brain health There's actually a ton of research coming out on mushrooms even for people that have Uh dementia or at a risk of dementia, um, you know lion mane being a really great supplement for them to be taking Uh, it's also really delicious and tasty as well just so um, so we do eat it But we often tincture ours, um into kind of a brain medicine Uh mitake mushroom another incredibly medicinal one, you know all kinds of good compounds So those are you know, there's a bunch of mushrooms we can do outdoors But I suggest starting with shiitake because it's one of the easier ones There's definitely some tricks of the trade to having success with things like mitake, lion's mane And shiitake as well, you know, there is a little bit more to it than just what I explained on this podcast But that that gives your listeners kind of a based overview of how the process works Yeah, let's talk about the type of trees because here I am in the west And so I am completely surrounded by pine trees evergreen trees Um, so what kind of logs are we looking for? Yeah, most of our mushrooms we are growing on deciduous trees our hardwood trees Um, there's a handful so for example our native reishi mushroom here on the east coast, uh ganoderma tasuke It's called it's actually a hemlock reishi And it grows exclusively actually on hemlock, which is an evergreen tree Um, so there are a handful of species that will grow on evergreen trees But usually we're actually looking at hardwoods, you know, particularly shiitake lion's mane mitake a lot of the more common ones Um, so, you know things like oak things like maple even like fruit trees nut trees Um, really most of your hardwoods poplars, you know, you can grow on them Uh poplars have a softer wood. So I find that they don't last as long So, you know, they're they're being example, you know doing shiitake into poplars That might be a species where you're more likely to get a fruit in 8 to 12 months instead of 12 to 24 But you might only get four years out of the log. Whereas if you inoculated in the oak log You know, it might take you 24 months to fruit But then that's where you're getting the nine years of time off of it, right? Just because of the density of the wood Yeah, that would make a lot of sense So I would imagine that like cottonwood would probably fall into that same category. Yeah with the poplars. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Good Well, that means that we have some options around here because we definitely have cottonwoods around Yeah, you could definitely do you could do oysters into cottonwood. You could also do shiitakes into cottonwood. Oh great Okay, cool. And then the oysters, how do you you didn't mention them with the logs? So do you do those the same way with the log? Uh, you you can do them with the logs Um, I find so again because the oyster is such an aggressive growing mycelium I find that it actually consumes the host fairly quick and you don't get as many years of flushing that you do with Things like the shiitakes so I found it's not as worth it for me to actually inoculate oyster logs Um for the amount of work to actually do it and how many years they produce I just haven't found it to be as good of an exchange of energy Um, I mean, I think still worthwhile, but we've just chose not to do that. So I do a technique called log towers um where Um, you don't get as many years looting off of it But it's it's way way quicker where I literally just cut log rounds and then I just lay mycelium in between those rounds And sometimes, you know, i've got i've got the flush in four months after i've done that um Oh, wow Okay, and then I do grow oysters are actually my favorite mushroom to go indoors and I do them year round And mostly growing on straw. So a nice clean straw source. I think even the coffee grounds that I meant to you earlier. So Yeah, okay. So that sounds really easy. Sounds like there's some good options So let's use that as a transition Let's go inside and talk about the good mushrooms that we can grow inside and the different techniques for doing that. Yeah, awesome Um, so again for indoor growing, I think the first thing we do need to talk safety. We're going to go indoors, right? Um, and when we're talking about safety, we're talking about both our own safety our health and the health of our home Um, because mushrooms when they release spores, which is how they reproduce they don't reproduce by seeds They reproduce by spores. They let out a lot of spores, you know Like I don't know what the actual number is, but it's got to be like hundreds of thousands If not billions, you know like crazy amounts of spore like when they release, you know There's a white film over everything around them, right? And breathing in quantities of spores. It's not good for us And especially over time so, you know people They're really trendy right now. These grow your own mushroom kits at home Where you buy like a little mushroom block and get it home and those are really great starting points They're fun to learn. They're a cool project with kids. You're probably going to get close to as many mushrooms as what you pay for You know, you're going to pay $30 for your mushroom block and you might get $30 a mushroom out of your mushroom block So you're not necessarily increasing your self-reliance growing on those blocks, but it is a great way to learn um Why i'm saying this for safety though, you know, most of those kits they don't come with any warning They just say yeah throw it in your kitchen sink or in your bathroom or whatever let it grow And the general thought is that you know There's so few spores coming off of that one block that it's not going to be a health problem That's generally what's kind of thought If you're growing any more than that You absolutely want to think about ventilation for it or capturing those spores. So I grow in something called a monotub So they're basically clear plastic tubs and this is actually great because it increases your success significantly And it sounds fancy, but it's relatively simple as well. I make a tub Um, which actually allows me now to keep an environment where the humidity is high anyways, right? Because if you're just growing on your counter chances are your house Especially in the winter time is too dry Anyways, and your mushrooms are going to start to grow and they're just going to dry up You put it inside of a chamber you're able to actually control the humidity in there And keep it kind of up for around like 80 90 percent which you're actually going to get way better flushes to begin with But the great part now is when the spores release they're doing it inside of your tub Um, and it's not spreading through your home you're not breathing them in and then of course There's the risk of the home as well, too, you know It's probably low risk that spores are actually going to float through your home and inoculate something in your home Like i'd say very low risk, but interesting enough I had um, I was growing mushrooms in these old garden tubs like garden pots in my basement Um, and I had a block that I thought was kind of finished and I just stuck it down in my root cell I kind of forgot about it for a couple of months And I went back and the mycelium had literally grown across the floor and into the wood, uh frame of my door Yeah, which that's that's not good. You don't you don't actually want that to happen, right? Um, fortunately my house is dry enough that it already kind of died by the time I found it But if you lived in a very moist home, you know, theoretically you could end up with oyster mushrooms growing out of your wall Uh and now and you know If your home is kind of susceptible to mold and bacteria in the first place or not bacteria But if your home is susceptible to mold It's definitely susceptible to mycelium potentially getting into, you know, some of your boards and stuff like that So just just something to figure out, you know, probably low risk, but not impossible and there's my story about growing There you go So keep I like to bring a chamber to grow inside of And if you want to grow more than what you can grow in a couple of chambers Then you can actually kind of like if you have a wood shop and you create a little fan close to the outside You can actually create ventilation to now take those spores outside through a window as well, but that's getting a little more advanced Yeah, so when you're talking about a chamber, I mean it sounds to me like you're actually talking about like a storage container That's clear almost. Isn't that simple? Yeah, like a Rubbermaid, you know fairly straightforward What's cool? Like in a small amount of space you can literally stack like six of those on top of each other And in a two by two space going up the side of your wall, you've almost got a constant supply of mushrooms, right? Wow, that's pretty cool. That's actually really neat. It is You know the one on the bottom it's kind of inoculating right now and the one on the Middle is about to fruit and the one on the top is the one that's actually fruiting and you actually cycle them So they're constantly coming like you can do that in an urban apartment If you wanted to And then you're actually able to look and if there's any sign that spore is actually released You can actually just take it outside and open it up outside to actually harvest it or tend it So you're not letting out that large quantity of spore into your house, right? Yeah Yeah, that is pretty neat so let's talk about the light requirements like I know you said they're not grown in the dark But they don't like direct light. So do we need row lights or is just ambient? No indirect light, you know So if you're in if you have them in a room with a window In it and you just have them off to the side so that the sun's not hitting right on them You know just that ambient light of the room is generally, uh, generally all you need for it If it's a darker space, then you know, some people will set up grow lights I've seen more advanced kind of mono chambers and mono tubs and brewing chambers that have lights in them But I don't so I I basically have them in my laundry room in these clear tubs and they're just sitting on a shelf in the corner Um, you know just indirect light in that room there Well, that's easier than growing just about anything else. You can grow inside, right? Yeah Yeah, and again, there's a little bit of work to that initial inoculation step But once you kind of get your systems dialed for it, uh, it's actually it's actually pretty quick to to get them cycling and keep That constant supply going Yeah, that's really neat so let's talk about the medium that you're growing in when you're in those chambers Is that you've you've mentioned straw you've mentioned coffee grounds Um, what's your favorite for that sort of scenario? Yeah. Well, I I mostly grow oysters indoors So straw works great and coffee grounds work because they're well coffee grounds are just a waste product I have straw is relatively cheap and very accessible Um, you know one thing I would encourage people to just think about is where they're getting their straw from Um, and there is you know, there's definitely some controversy around that, you know Some mushroom growers just grow on whatever straw and they're not worried about it Um, and i've actually just grown on straw I've grown on straw many times where I had no idea where it came from But we know, you know straw is sprayed, you know using things like roundup on straws is common Uh, you know everything i've read suggests that things have broken down so much by the time that you're getting it that it's not a worry but mushrooms are accumulators of You know mushrooms are used in you know Bioremediation projects where they're literally using mushrooms to pull toxins out of soil, you know mushrooms can accumulate lead And different things like that. So, you know, I do suggest trying to get a clean straw source if that's an option Um, so whether you can get organic straw or if you just know a farmer Uh, and you know what they're putting on their fields, uh, that that's kind of helpful Um, there's all kinds of other mediums you can grow on, you know, things like coconut husks Really? There's all kinds of different carbon sources that you can grow on Um, you can get compressed, uh wood chips You know when you get into the realms of growing things like lion's mane and mataki and reishi like some of those more medicinal mushrooms Um, usually they're not growing on straw at that point They're actually growing on wood chips and you can actually uh, or sorry compressed like uh, sawdust fiber So you literally can buy bags of it through like mushroom growth stores And they're these little pellets and when you mix them with the water, they actually expand Um, and then you inoculate them often you're adding a little bit of uh food in there as well So like, you know things like a wheat germ or things like that, uh to feed them It gets a little bit, uh when you get into the realm of like reishi, mataki, lion's mane It definitely gets a lot more complex than this basic oyster on straw or oyster on coffee that I I chat about and again because oysters are so aggressive You can get away with this really simple system that you can just do in your kitchen And likely have a fair bit of success with um when you get into the more medicinal projects that are a bit harder Uh, absolutely doable, but there's a little bit more to it You know, you're suddenly you're talking about using your pressure canner and bringing it up to Certain temperature for your wood chips and then you're inoculating it with the spore literally through a syringe in the The screen and it gets a little more fancy at that point, you know Yeah, definitely, you know all of these things you can get really technical. Um, yeah People start with oysters. Yeah Well, I mean with your tomatoes like you can dial in tomato growing to a crazy science and you can spend thousands of dollars on producing the best tomatoes, you know, so It's always fun to see things that we have the really simple version and the really easy thing to do so I love the idea of being able to reuse something that we already have on the homestead like the coffee grounds if you're drinking coffee, and again, that's probably another one has a propensity to have a lot of toxins in it and actually a lot of Funguses molds in it if you're not getting really good quality coffee to begin with Which you should be if you're drinking it and putting it into your body all the time Um, so start with a good medium, but you know, you're talking about straw What if you don't have straw on the homestead, but you do have you know Really good quality hay for animals or maybe even grass clippings from your lawn that hasn't been sprayed Do you have flexibility to bring that type of stuff in? Does it need to be carbonaceous and so just dry and then it's okay. Are there more requirements? Yeah, I haven't played around with grass or hay, but theoretically it makes sense to me that it would work Um, you know, i'm sure if you did a quick little internet search I can't really speak to it because I haven't done it So i'm sure you could do a quick internet search, but you know, uh, i'm I would be surprised if it wouldn't work Um the thing you're gonna want you're gonna want to make sure it's dry. Uh, it's clean, you know, you wouldn't want to be Uh, you know raking up grass that it sat there have been rained on multiple times, right? So you'd want to get it fresh you'd want to dry it out Uh, you'd want to know that it's nice and clean and then you probably would want to go through a pasteurization process for it You know, we kind of bring it up to I forget the exact number but I want to say it's like around 165 degrees fahrenheit or something like that. Whatever the pasteurization temperature is, uh, there's chemical ways You can you can pasteurize as well, you know with like peroxide or with uh with lime Uh, so there's there's different ways you could do that, but I would probably want to pasteurize it um You know, I get away with my straw you can you can pasteurize a lot of people pasteurize straw as well Although i've gotten away with just using it literally straight from the braille again because oysters are so aggressive Uh same with your coffee, you know, you may uh, and if you're having trouble with mold, you know You may want to pasteurize your coffee first, but i've had success just literally I take the coffee I throw it into the freezer bag Wait till I have enough to fill a mason jar take it out put it in there layer my mycelium in and Let it do its thing, you know, and i've had success that way as well. So And of course the reason behind the pasteurization idea is that we don't want a lot of competing molds or other Funguses in order, you know, we want to make sure that we're inoculating and growing what we're trying to grow And that something else isn't killing it off So yeah that that kind of starts to open up a lot of things if you can look around and start going Hey, maybe you know Maybe those grass cliff things would work if you've got them nice and clean and they haven't gotten moldy sitting around And have the opportunity for things to um to grow in them, but that is really fascinating are there any other mushrooms that kind of fall outside of the Um, the the methods that you've talked about here that are your favorite to grow or things that you really like growing Yeah, those are kind of the main one. I mean i'm really excited about lion's mane these days um, you know, we've been doing a lot of research and again in laura's family, uh, there's a a few People in her family have had dementia issues, you know and with some of the uh Some of the aunts and uncles starting to age we've been really thinking about you know Lion's mane tincture is as being a really good medicine just to be supportive of them and even for our own brains You know as we age Um, so so lion's manes one i'm pretty excited about. Um, I do grow it outside already But i'm just starting to to play around with growing it indoors Uh, which is kind of getting into this more Extensive setup where we're literally using an autoclave and we're sterilizing and we're not pasteurizing at this place. We're fully sterilizing, you know under pressure um Yeah, so that takes it a whole nother step forward, but that's really neat Yeah, and then of course foraging, you know opens up a whole nother world There's all kinds of mushrooms that we we forage, uh and dry and preserve, you know in that medicinal round but use year-round You know, uh, we love doing uh, one of our favorites in the winter is a mushroom chai Uh with a lot of the tree mushrooms So we do a chai, you know with your typical like cinnamon and cardamom and all your chai spices um, but then we'll actually steep things like turkey tail and birch polypore and foamy's momentaris and Reishi mushroom, you know Um, so we'll have basically all these kind of tree polypore mushrooms that are all just chock full of all kinds of great stuff Uh, and we'll we'll steep those for multiple days with the chai spices Uh and just have that either going in the crock pot or or sometimes just sitting on the wood stove, you know And just you come in there and pour it out put a little honey in there and wow What a great drink it is. Oh, that sounds amazing. And it sounds like it would be absolutely amazing for your immune health, too Well, especially though and we don't tend to do it in the summer But in the winter time when we're you know during cold and flu season seems to be when we we tend to do that You know, yeah, that is really neat So really quickly, what do you think the number one mistake that you see beginners making when it comes to growing mushrooms? That you would warn people off of Um Probably just really understanding the growing needs at the different stages is really really important You know when you first inoculate them their needs are a little bit different than when they're ready to fruit Yeah, um, so that would probably be like the base one Just kind of understand what they need while they're growing and understand what they need to fruit And then beyond that, you know, so if you're growing indoors, probably the two biggest ones are not enough So people are growing in tubs not enough oxygen Okay, it's a big issue and then you get really long spindly mushrooms So that can be a problem or just not being meticulous enough and keeping everything clean And then all of a sudden you've got mold growing on your mushrooms, right? So those those are probably the basics for their um outdoor growing Um, probably actually one is just not waiting long enough when people are doing shiitakes You know people will go and do their shiitake logs Actually, i'll share two for shiitakes keep them moist Um, so the very first year I I keep the logs close to my house and if it doesn't rain once a week I'll actually water them like throw the sprinkler on them. Sure once they've uh, we call it being colonized So once the log is fully full of mycelium, they're actually incredibly hardy So the first year I baby them a little bit, you know, and I will actually keep them close to the house I'll throw a sprinkler on them. So they're in the shade full they can be full shade at this point uh because the mycelium is just growing inside the log, uh Make sure that they get watered once or twice a week until you basically see the mycelium growing on the end of the logs Once you see the mycelium on the end of the logs Then you I just toss them into the forest and now they're just good. I don't do anything. I don't water them I basically all I do is harvest after them so keeping the moisture in that first year is huge for outdoors and then two uh People will often let the log sit for a year or two and they're like, oh it didn't work and they forget about it And then three four years later they walk past and like oh my goodness. There's mushrooms growing out of that, you know We've actually given up on logs When we first started in the early days and we'd go and build them into our garden and use them like it's like terraces And stuff and then we come back in like a year or later They'd be fruiting and we thought they were no good and we just didn't wait long enough So so patience is a virtue as well Well, I am really encouraged by this because it while I while I understand there's details there's ways, you know You want to do it the right way? It's actually way more simple in the process than I had been under the impression of so that's really exciting And um something that i'm really looking forward to getting into So you guys I want to tell you if you are interested in this also Chris has been incredibly generous and offered you guys as listeners a 25 off coupon for his growing and foraging wild mushrooms course which is Amazing and I am so excited. I have One of his courses I haven't gotten into it yet But i'm really excited that josh and I are going to sit down with all the kids and we are going to watch it We're going to be taking it and learning a lot about Growing our own mushrooms specifically. We have a lot to forage up here too that we need to learn too We're in a very damp environment Forested environment so we have tons of mushrooms all around us We've only learned how to find and identify a couple of the top ones So if you're interested in this topic, make sure you go Grab the link that's associated with this Podcast show notes, um, so we'll put it in the description and Make sure you use the coupon code That we'll have down there for you, too For 25 off and if you just want to know a little bit more about chris or check out what he's doing Visit him at www.chrisoutdoors with an s dot ca Um for canada there. So this has just been amazing and really encouraging Chris thank you so much for joining us Yeah, you're welcome. That was a blast fun to fun to chat with you there All right. Thank you. We'll see you guys real soon. Goodbye