Grow your own mushrooms

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A desire to eat more natural, locally grown food coupled with the economic downturn has fueled the boom in gardening with edible plants.

Sales of vegetable starter plants, fruit trees, berries and herbs now total about $3 billion a year, a 20 percent increase over what consumers spent in 2008.

While there is much satisfaction in raising visually pleasing plants, many gardeners find it even more rewarding to see their own homegrown tomatoes, cucumbers and other veggies on their plates.

Like other moderately successful vegetable gardeners, I’m back at it this year in a plot double the size of last year’s.

My former 4-by-4-foot test plot is now 4 by 8 feet, which is tiny by all reasonable standards, but I like to think of it as compact and manageable.

There’s nothing more discouraging to new vegetable gardeners than seeing a big plot overtaken by weeds in August when it is too hot and humid to do much about it.

So a small plot covered with thick layers of newspaper and mulch as weed barriers works best for me.

But now I’m planning a new gardening adventure, along with others who attended a program on growing mushrooms last week at the Memphis Botanic Garden.

Horticulturist Chris Cosby showed a noontime audience how easy it can be to grow the friendly fungi in shrub beds, forested areas or other shady spots.

If you’ve seen wild mushrooms pop up in your beds and lawn, you know conditions are favorable. We are rightly hesitant about eating uninvited mushrooms because some are poisonous and many are edible but not particularly tasty.

Cosby recommends growing wine cap mushrooms, which are also known as garden giants or, botanically, as stropharia.

“It’s the easiest, most delicious mushroom I’ve grown,” he said.

You can sauté, grill or braise wine caps, which have a meaty texture similar to portobellos. They’re best when they are relatively small with tight gills, (the plate-like structures under the caps).

You don’t need a log or a special kit to grow them.

All you need is some wood chips and commercially produced spawn, the mycelium of the mushrooms inoculated onto sawdust or another substrate.

The mycelium is a web of white filamentous growths, similar to fine root hairs, found in the soil wherever mushrooms appear.

Cosby buys his spawn through Field and Forest Products (fieldforest.net) or (800) 792-6220.

Five pounds of spawn, which costs about $23 plus shipping, is enough to cover 50 square feet. It may take three to six weeks to receive your order because the spawn will be grown especially for you.

It’s important, Cosby said, to remove leaves, debris and any turf or weeds from the site so the spawn has direct contact with the soil. You don’t have to till or rake the soil to loosen it.

Sprinkle about ¼ cup of spawn over each square foot of soil surface.

Then cover with about an inch of sawdust, if you have it, and then 2 to 4 inches of wood chips. Fresh, not aged, hardwood chips are best. Try to find some with particles of diverse size.

If the chips and soil are dry, moisten well before spreading, and then make sure the chips get about an inch of moisture per week for the first few weeks.

An added bonus: The mushrooms decompose the wood chips and twigs, enriching the soil.

“Mushrooms turn the wood chips into the humus everyone wants for their garden,” Cosby said.

Most years, he gets three to five fruitings of mushrooms. The first usually occurs in June. When the caps emerge, they look like newly dug red potatoes.

Cosby harvests the largest caps first. When wine caps get too big, they tend to dry out and be less tasty.

Cap sizes range from 2 to 10 inches across and from wine red to brown. The stalks are white.

If you cover the bed with more wood chips every fall and spring, you can keep the caps coming for years without adding extra spawn.

“Think of the forest floor,” Cosby said, in giving the mushrooms what they need to thrive. The wood chips are food for them. Once they are used up and completely decomposed, the mushrooms need a new supply.

After attending Cosby’s program, Master Gardener Debbie LaChapelle, is planning to grow some wine caps.

“I think it would be really cool to grow mushrooms you know you can eat,” she said. “I have a shady spot where nothing is growing, so I’m going to try it there.”

Ann Frogge, another master gardener at the meeting, has already ordered the spawn for wine caps.

A few weeks ago she also had shiitake mushroom spawn inoculated into eight logs gleaned from the removal of a sweet gum tree earlier this spring. Because the spawn need to be kept moist, she has them in a shady place that gets irrigation.

It may take two years for the inoculated logs to produce mushrooms, but she is willing to wait.

“I just love mushrooms, and when I was a child (in Middle Tennessee), we used to hunt for morels,” she said. “I just think it will be neat to have some homegrown mushrooms.”

Diane Meucci, co-owner of Gardens Oy Vey, has been growing shiitakes on logs for the past 20 years. Some logs produce mushrooms for 10 years.

She believes in integrating edible plants into the landscape and thinks mushrooms, like wine caps and others, add to the beauty of hydrangeas and other shrubs.

Local farmers are also offering locally grown mushrooms, mostly shiitakes. They include Whitton Farms in Tyronza, Ark., and Dickey Farms Heirlooms Mushrooms in Potts Camp, Miss.

More about wood chips

At his mushroom program, Chris Cosby dispelled the common gardening adage that using fresh wood chips as mulch ties up nitrogen in the soil, causing yellowing and stress to plants.

As the chips begin to decompose, nitrogen availability may be compromised on the surface of the soil when fresh wood chips are present.

But it does not adversely affect the ability of established plants with extensive deep roots to use nitrogen below the surface, Cosby said.

Fresh wood chips are not recommended as a mulch on beds planted with young annuals and vegetables that have shallow roots with only a short time to get established.

But they are fine under trees and well-established shrubs.

For details on research concerning the use of fresh wood chips go to wsu.edu, the website of Washington State University.

In the “People” search box on the right, type in “Chalker,” for extension horticulturist Linda Chalker-Scott.

Look for the .pdf listing titled “Wood Chips.” You will see a detailed but readable article summarizing the latest research concerning the use of fresh wood chips in gardens.

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