Grow your own mushrooms for flavor and savings
That was three years ago. Post now inoculates green oak logs with shiitake spawn purchased from Fungi Perfecti, a Washington state-based mushroom product supplier. The spawn consists of living mycelium, a threadlike root structure that feeds off the wood’s nutrients and eventually makes mushrooms. For a $20 investment in a five-pound bag of sawdust laced with shiitake spawn, she’s already harvested at least 20 pounds of mushrooms. Shiitakes run about $10 a pound at Whole Foods, so the return on investment is swell.
“There’s a reason mushroom is a verb,” said Post. “Once the mushrooms start fruiting, the yield is fantastic. And the quality is so much better than anything you can get in a produce section.”
Aptaker, an Allentown educator, has been growing mushrooms and selling to specialty markets since the early 1990s. Thanks to the freak snowstorm that hit the region in late October, he now has 320 inoculated logs in his back yard. “My wife kind of rolls her eyes,” he said. “But I couldn’t rest thinking of all the downed oak trees just waiting to be cut into mushroom-growing logs.”
Curing ‘shroom fear
In his workshops, one of the first issues Aptaker tackles is what he calls “mushroom-phobia.” “When I started getting interested in wild edible foods, I was afraid of mushrooms,” he recalled. “I thought you had to be a scientist to tell the difference between an edible and a poisonous mushroom. You just have to have somebody show you, and use field guides. I’ve eaten more than 75 types of wild mushrooms and never even gotten a tummy ache.”
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