Today we meet up with Eliah and Louis at Northspore in Westbrook Maine. We’ll learn about some mushroom growing basics in the Northeast from the folks who live and breathe mushrooms!
Show Notes
Northspore is a rising mycology company in Southern Maine. Originally created by three friends as a mushroom farm they have grown to offer mushroom spawn, inoculation supplies, mycological education and more. The crew at Northspore loves mushrooms and they want you to love them too! Join us as we talk about mushroom terminology, growing practices and marketing mushrooms on small farms.
This episode is our COVID friendly answer to the North Country Fruit and Vegetable Seminar and Tradeshow, a successful event started nearly 20 years ago by our colleague Steve Turaj. We have recorded a series of 5 episodes of interest to farmers in the North Country and those who choose to live a rural life. We will make the topic of each episode the subject of a lunch time panel discussion session in October 2021. Please join us on October 28 at noon to dive deeper into the topic of mushroom production.
Produced by The University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension is an equal opportunity educator and employer. UNH, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and New Hampshire counties cooperating. Our programs and policies are consistent with pertinent Federal and State laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity (including gender expression), sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, familial/parental status, income derived from a public assistance program, political beliefs, reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity.
What is North Country Fruit & Vegetable Farmers?
University of New Hampshire Extension specialists interview seasoned growers in northern New Hampshire who share insights into creating a successful agricultural business.
00:00 Eliah
If you go to a thriving farmers market in the US today it's hard to go to one of those markets and not have a mushroom farm there. Yeah,
00:08 Louis
absolutely. You know, mushroom people are cool people.
00:12 Heather
Welcome to the North Country small farm and rural living podcast. My name is Heather Bryant and my UNH Cooperative Extension colleagues Olivia Saunders Nick Braley and I are launching a series of five podcasts this fall, the podcasts are a COVID friendly answer to the North Country fruit and vegetable seminar and trade show that was started by our retired colleague Steve trage. Approximately two decades ago, we plan to release the podcast in the fall. And then in October, we will run a series of five interactive lunchtime discussion sessions, one for each podcast. During these sessions, we'll be able to dive deeper into each topic, you can ask questions of the people we interviewed and or each other. The topics will center around issues and ideas of interest of farmers and people who choose to live a rural life. Thanks very much for joining us.
01:05 Nick
My name is Nick Rowley. I'm a food and ag field specialist with UNH Cooperative Extension.
01:10 Eliah
My name is Elijah Tannhauser. I'm a co founder and CEO of North spore and I'm here with Louis Gillar.
01:18 Louis
I've been with North for about four years, and I work on our production and do a lot of our event planning, outdoor cultivation classes, indoor classes foraging and other things as well.
01:33 Nick
What is north spore? What are you guys all about?
01:34 Eliah
Our mission is to make the world of mushrooms accessible to all. And we do that through education and producing quality growing supplies for mushroom growing. And we started as a fresh mushroom farm. And we expanded quickly into producing mushroom growing products. JOHN Carver, my business partner, went to graduate school for mushroom biology and started our mushroom lab. And we produce many, many different types of spawn, sterile substrates, cultures, growing supplies, grow kits, for indoor growing, outdoor growing, as well as doing some farmers markets and educational videos and walks and outreach. And Louis does a lot of other educational events and organizes things like this podcast and we're now in our seventh year and just excited to keep encouraging people to grow mushrooms pushing innovation and mushroom growing.
02:46 Nick
And how have you guys grown over those seven years
02:51 Eliah
we've grown quite quickly it's we it's kind of amazing for me to be where we are now Louie has been with us for years.
03:01 Louis
I mean, even just since I joined nor sport has changed a whole lot. Why I wasn't here for it, he Elia can speak on the the early days using buckets to grow mushrooms. But when I joined, we were 12 people or so in the same space that we are now but producing far less and far fewer products.
03:30 Nick
I found out about you guys because I was just doing a little bit of my own, like research on like, where to get spawn and that sort of stuff. And I wasn't I didn't realize that you guys were right here. But I had seen your home grow kits before. And actually my friend had one on his counter a couple years ago, I think. And so I went to your website, and I started looking like through like your educational stuff and what you offer and I was like, This is awesome. And so when we started, you know, thinking about this podcast, I was like, I hope those guys will answer my phone call. So yeah, thanks again. So you know, this podcast is mainly for farmers, or homesteaders or anybody and that sort of category. I guess my first question is are you seeing farmers adopt mushroom culture as a way to diversify what they can offer?
04:24 Eliah
Yeah, and I actually this is a subject that excites me because we started as a fresh mushroom farm solely doing and growing fresh mushrooms and selling to local restaurants and doing farmers markets and even doing mushroom specific CSA. And so we have that experience and it's a little bit hard when you're just a mushroom farm to show up at a farmers market and only be selling mushrooms you know for our bigger farmers markets, like Portland or Brunswick we do pretty well because there's enough people but if you show up in a small town farmer's market and all you have is mushrooms you're not going to do a lot of sales where if you have vegetables meat, eggs, you know you're going to your gross sales are going to be higher because you have more staples that people are looking for. But I think that adding mushrooms into diversified farms is just like really makes sense because they're high value. They're easy to grow, they often can be grown on agricultural waste products that farms already have are logs which they have access to. And their customers whether they're CSA customers, restaurant customers, farmers market customers want mushrooms as well. And like I said they are a high value crop so I think it's a really good supplement to an already like agricultural business.
06:01 Louis
I've had farmers come up to me at the farmers market and consult with me on adding that as a product I've been invited out to farms emailed lots of farmer interest in growing mushrooms for sure.
06:17 Nick
I think a question I have you know, coming from like a farmer's perspective is that and maybe you know this because you were and still are mushroom farmer is that like, is there this perception from consumers only to want to trend towards like what they see in their grocery store. I know you guys offer like, wide variety of different mushrooms. And you know, are these people just want do they just want to buy those little? You probably know the name of them. I don't know, a little white mushroom to get in a package?
06:49 Eliah
That's a good question. And I do think people tend to want what they're familiar with. But mushrooms are becoming a lot more popular. Like even in the seven years that I've been growing mushrooms commercially. And we've been in business, just the types of mushrooms that chefs at restaurants are wanting that people are looking for at farmer's markets that people are familiar with even if you go to Whole Foods or a co op the types of mushrooms that are probably going to be available there compared to seven years ago is a really different variety. And I'll let loose speak to this as well but I think that there's some people that want to try new things all the time there's some people that really want to stick with what they're familiar with but I think either way people are getting more familiar with a wide range of mushrooms and the demand is they are unseen I mean we supply commercial mushroom farms with spawn and growing materials all over the country. And the amount of farmers markets that have just mushroom farms in the US has just exploded you know I don't there weren't that many soul mushroom farms at farmer's markets seven years ago but I think if you go to a thriving farmers market in the US today it's hard to go to one of those markets and not have a mushroom farm there
08:17 Louis
yeah absolutely you know mushroom people are cool people and you whatever it is that puts that bug in their head to look into growing mushrooms I think a lot of times people are ready for an open mind to be introduced to new species because they know that they don't know so much there they recognize that they've were brought up on portobellos and button mushrooms and and maybe they know she talkies and so they're ready for us to tell them what they can grow in in various situations.
08:54 Nick
Yeah, I think you just described me so you know and you know my backgrounds through vegetable production and in you know, the vegetable research I did I was always trialing different varieties, different cultivars of certain vegetables you know, there's different textures, tastes, flavors, storage life, and I'm sure there's that similar you know, circumstance with different mushrooms. Is there any specific like, mushroom? Is it would it be strain or species
09:24 Louis
species typically,
09:26 Nick
is there any specific species that you guys get wicked excited about?
09:31 Louis
Well, the the whole kind of model wouldn't be possible without the oyster mushroom. That's the one that really allowed you know nor spore to be nor spore. And a lot of other mushroom farms and really, oysters aren't new oysters have been around and even in grocery stores for quite a while, but they're just really pretty easy to grow and strains have evolved as well. So there's new, new cool strains that have been selected for. And species that are yellow and pink. So that really has exploded in popularity. I think it all started with the oyster mushroom
10:17 Eliah
benefits of oyster are they grow really quickly. They're quite easy to grow. They're abundant. And they're very mild in flavor. And in my opinion, like, as far as taste goes there just like a better version of a button mushroom or to portabella. So you take people that that's all they've experienced, and it's kind of like some people even say, Oh, and I actually years ago was one of these people that didn't really think I liked mushrooms. And that's kind of like saying, Oh, you don't like vegetables, but the only thing you've ever eaten is broccoli. You know, there's so many different vegetables out there. And there's so many different mushrooms out there. And I kind of think of for people that are not familiar with mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms are kind of like the gateway mushroom. They're like the mushroom that's like not, it's mild in flavor. There's not a lot that's going to turn people off. And they're delicious. And you know, someone that maybe didn't like eating raw button mushrooms on salads as a kid, but never had a really well cooked oyster mushroom, they just kind of like opens the door to like, how amazing, like delicious. Mushrooms of different species can be
11:39 Louis
a couple points on that. First, always cook your mushrooms, especially oysters. You don't want to eat them raw on a salad, like you might eat your buttons. Even your button mushrooms that way, well, I don't think it's preferable. For a few reasons, you should definitely not do that with oysters, you're not going to have a good time. But the idea got a great story just the other day Kate, the lab tech and I taught a bunch of kids over at a community center called Portland Community squash, about mushrooms. And one of the stations we had was just cooking them some oyster mushrooms, and not just a few but maybe most of them were really hesitant didn't think they'd like them. Let me tell you, they were asking for seconds and thirds, fry them up and butter with some time, salt and pepper on some crackers. Delicious.
12:42 Nick
It's making me hungry too. I love that term gateway mushroom sounds like something I shouldn't be doing. But hey, so you know, I asked you if if it was like a species or a strain I think that this would be a good time to talk about a little bit of the terminology here. So like, what's the difference between a species and a strain when it comes to mushrooms,
13:08 Louis
it really has to do with mating and that's how it works with with other with animals and plants as well. So mushrooms can mate with other mushrooms within the same species strain you are within that within those boundaries of sexual reproduction you can select for different physical characteristics and that's basically it you will get differentiation enough that you can call it a new strain whether it's bigger stems or a color and then you can keep selecting for that but as long as that is able to mate with other mushrooms of the same species it hasn't gone outside those bounds
14:01 Nick
and I think you know probably a lot of our listeners are familiar with like a similar concept when it comes to say maybe fruits and vegetables Yeah,
14:11 Eliah
I mean for you know for commercial farmers this would be very, very similar to vegetables or you know, there's different species and then there's tons of variety like a strain is basically a variety within a species. So you know, if you're familiar with many varieties of different vegetable crops, it'd be the same thing within the mushroom world.
14:34 Louis
That being said, it's never that simple. taxonomy is goes deep with subspecies and other levels. But no, we don't deal in that. We will talk about various strains and species and that's it.
14:52 Nick
Can we just go over like an overview of what the general life cycle of mushroom is from I guess inoculation to harvesting or the fruiting body,
15:04 Louis
you may start with spores. We are nor spore. However, we don't often start with spores, most of the time, we're starting with a tissue culture. So it's literally a piece of a mushroom. And we put that on an agere plate, which is just a nutritious gel. And we do that in, in a sterile environment under a flow hood, there's a hepa filter, blowing clean air out and the mycelium, which is the vegetative part of a mushroom will spread on that. And then we'll take a piece of that and put it on grain that has been hydrated and sterilized in and then when it's spread, then that's food for it, and it will spread and cover the grain. And from there, we can continue to extrapolate on to more grain or sawdust. And sometimes that sawdust is a formulation for fruiting off of directly. And sometimes that's to be used as spawn for spreading on an outdoor bed, for example. So it's really just about that extrapolation from tissue culture. In our case, however, you could go from spores, it's just takes longer is less efficient, and the genetics will be variable. And with tissue culture, it's sort of like taking it's sort of like grafting,
16:33 Eliah
things always get more complex in the fungal world. But it is similar, most commercial mushroom. Farming is done through cloning, or like Lee was saying, taking tissue samples, putting them on other sterile substrates and then growing them on other substrates which actually produce the mushrooms or fruiting bodies that you harvest. And that is analogous to like grafting apples where all those Apple varieties are clones, you know, you're staying with the same genetics for consistency. And that's what we do when we culture out the same variety or species of mushroom. And you can you know, people can grow apple trees from seed as you can grow mushrooms from spores, but you're going to have genetic variability that is not usually desirable when you're a commercial farmer,
17:32 Nick
my research I've done or just looking into this, I hate to call it research. You know, there was it seemed like there's like this outdoor log production, and then there's indoor mushroom production. And I think a lot of farmers probably just getting into the mushroom game or going to go for the log production if they're just adding it as a product on their farm. So I was hoping we could dive into that topic a little bit. So can we just go over you know, how you would go about starting log production mushrooms on a farm.
18:10 Louis
It's funny, I'll be in Boston or something and people will ask me where am I going to get a log. So presumably, you folks have access to plenty of fresh cut wood so there's that's key right there you want fresh cut hardwood. For most of our species. There's a couple exceptions. But for the most part, you want fresh cut hardwood, and we have a chart on our website, kind of explaining which trees work with which species best but the gold standard is shiitake on oak, that's the most often used combo and works really really well. So you want logs that are I like to say you should be able to lift them so they about three feet in length. Sometimes for four to six four to eight inches in diameter is really good. Again, fresh cut wood during the early early spring is the best time to cut before when the when the sugars are flowing. But before those sugars are being used for leaf out for budding and stuff. And once you cut those things, you you drill holes and you inoculate with either plug spawn or sawdust spawn cover with some wax, some cover the ends some don't. It you can have a lot of success either way, and then it's mostly a waiting game. keeping things hydrated is really important though during that during that process, you can dunk logs to to help the mycelium along And then once things start growing after a year or two, you can do what's called forced flushes. Okay, so we've got our logs, they're inoculated, you've waited a couple years, stacked up, you know, close together to hold on to moisture. And you may see the mycelium on the ends of the logs, the white stuff spread real nice. And so once you start seeing mushrooms fruit, you can every six weeks or so, you can dunk the logs again and do what's called a forced fruiting. Dunk them in a trash can or a trough or a pond stream and leave them there for you know, no more than 12 hours, I'd say you can drown your mushrooms, you can drown your logs. So you don't want to don't want to do that. And you you can get a whole lot of mushrooms that way should talk to us are really predictable in that in that way. And there's lots of varieties, some that are more adapted to cold weather, some warm ours is a wide range and will work in a lot of different climates.
21:09 Eliah
And the the forced fruiting or forced flushes is pretty critical for a lot of commercial applications, because mushrooms are sensitive to moisture and temperature and that will trigger fruiting and growth. And, you know, like, if you notice, a lot of times in the middle of the summer, after we've got a lot of rain, you'll go out in the woods and there'll be mushrooms everywhere. And if you just leave your large mushroom log crop up to that you'll be getting hundreds of pounds of mushrooms all at once, when maybe if you only have two or three farmers markets that might be hard to sell 300 pounds to shiitakes in one time frame. But if you staggered it by, you know, soaking 30 logs a week and made sure you had a consistent supply of shiitakies throughout the summer for your markets, it's a lot easier to kind of have that be a consistent source of revenue and harvest. So that is like a kind of a technical harvesting but business like kind of thing to do as well. And it does take about a year for the log to colonize once it's inoculated, so you wouldn't expect to get your first harvest for at least a year. I like to think about outdoor growing especially in logs is kind of like a pseudo perennial. Because those logs will produce fruit for a number of years. I kind of sometimes I think about it as like maybe like a strawberry or an asparagus like they won't necessarily go forever but they might go four or five six years of production and if you you're constantly every year producing new logs, you're kind of each year your old logs are kind of being phased out and your new logs are coming into production and so you have a nice consistent yearly seasonal production of mushrooms and that works really well for people I'd also just add that you can actually inoculate really any time throughout the warmer months like spring through early fall it's just like Lou was saying there's a period of leaf out in the spring when trees if you cut during the just budding out the bark retention tends to not be as good and then it can lose bark and then blogs can dry out faster but you can cut during the summer and inoculate or in really early spring is a great ideal time but it's sometimes there's never a good time if you don't have time and so do it when you can
24:07 Eliah
so shiitakes are sort of like the gateway mushroom using that term again a good one for outdoor growing just as the oysters are the gateway for indoor growing but there are many others that are good for outdoor growing and they have their own requirements both with the wood that they need and the amount of time they might take etc
24:33 Nick
and I was looking into doing this I think that that log question and in when to harvested and when to document is kind of hung me up because I was like well this isn't really the best time and maybe I'll wait and then of course I had no time to do it. So don't do it. So like you know come this December or something. You know, can you just harvest harvest your logs and set them aside you know for the winter and
24:59 Louis
it would be better to not wait that season, as you said December, right?
25:03 Nick
Somewhere, you know, I'm thinking after the growing seasons done, maybe there's a little more time, you know, so
25:09 Eliah
I actually had a friend who has a mushroom business in Vermont and he harvested in December in January and inoculated injured starting in January, February, March, which I would not do, because when they're really cold, they're not going to colonize it sort of like you're getting the cells in the logs, but the cells aren't there dormant, they're not going to do anything outside. So I didn't like that idea, I wouldn't do it. But they actually in the spring, the cells were just there, like, you know, started being active and his logs colonized really well. And that worked, I would not sit I would suggest cutting a little later. Because basically, when there's a mushroom in a log that you're propagating, or in a tree, and it's really cold temperatures, it's it's dormant, it's not the cells are not spreading in the tree, there's not much going on. And it's sort of like putting seeds in a bed at a low temperature, like those seeds still might have the potential to grow well, but they're not going to start germinating and like really doing their thing when it's cold. So it'd be best if you were cutting like, you know, maybe February or March, and then inoculating because it's just warming up enough that you're getting those cells in the logs, and it's at a warm enough time that they're starting to grow as soon as they're in the logs, and they're just off to a head start. So I'd wait a little past December. But I've seen people day like you can even do it in the middle of the winter. And it's not ideal, but it seems like it were
26:47 Nick
a lot of times we have to kind of walk that line between what's ideal and what's practical, especially on a farm and nothing's ever perfect. Just like the rest of the life, right? Yeah. Going back to the staggering of the the logs, how late into like, I guess how early in the season, can you start doing that? And then how late in the season Can you do that?
27:12 Eliah
It really does again, it's down to when is it warm enough for the cells to be really thought colonizing in the logs. So it kind of even depends on your micro climate and weather. They're, you know, how protective they are and the temperature but you know, even a bit above freezing, they will do some colonizing. So you know, I think it'd probably be ideal to inoculate between like march in, I don't know, the end of October or earlier in October in like Maine and New Hampshire, Vermont, but I think it really does kind of depend on the season and your temperature of where your specific location is.
28:03 Louis
I concur. I was gonna say end of October, because even if you had a few days, warmer, needs a few weeks. Yeah, ideally to get established for that mycelium to jump from the plugs are sawdust.
28:20 Eliah
The cool thing about mushrooms too, is say, if you like you know, I don't know, hypothetically you try to germinate a tomato in October, you might get enough warm days for it to germinate. And then it gets cold and it's gonna die. Like it's not the but mushroom cells because they're propagating through cell division, much like a bacteria. If you get a warm day, they will grow and work on colonizing. And then when it's cold again, they'll go dormant, and they won't die when they go dormant. And then when it warms up again, they'll keep and that's what's happening to your logs. That's why they grow mushrooms every year and then go dormant in the winter. So it's not as sensitive. It really does even each day it can affect the way they colonize. And it's not as sensitive as a plant germinating.
29:13 Nick
Have you heard of people trying to force mushrooms like into the cold season say like in a high tunnel or structure like that? Is that possible?
29:24 Louis
Yes. The answer is yes, you definitely can. People will bring them into basements or use high tunnels to extend the season to allow for more colonization early on. I think in on big ships, hockey farms down in Arkansas, for example, they'll have big, it doesn't get as cold down there. So it's a different situation, but they use like big misters you know, to keep things hydrated. And so there's no reason you couldn't set something like that up.
29:56 Eliah
This is something we're actually really excited about doing more research. JOHN in the future, so our facility is mostly indoors. But we do plan on getting greenhouse space and getting more outdoor space to really do a lot of for season trials, because we'd love to be able to push the envelope and help farmers be able to grow logs, as you know, in fruit and produce mushrooms as close to year round as possible. And I think with season extension, and greenhouse techniques, especially with farmers that already have the greenhouses up that may be using them less heavily in the winter. I think there's a lot of potential to be doing that. And it's something that we have not done a lot of trials on ourselves yet, but it's something we're really excited about doing and I think could really help the agricultural community.
30:52 Nick
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's super awesome to hear that. I'm excited about that. So you know, you can inoculate the log, and you have a few options, right of why you do that with, from my understanding, which is limited. You can do plugs, sawdust or grain, right? Well,
31:11 Louis
you probably wouldn't inoculate a log with grain. In fact, you definitely shouldn't. That's just gonna get eaten by bugs or critters, for sure, and so won't have time to colonize. So you want to use plugs or sawdust. And then there are many species and many types of wood again, just one that came to mind when we were talking about time lengths of time. You can do shiitake on birch, for example. And it may not be as ideal you may not get as much but purchase a softer wood, the mycelium is going to be able to move through that material faster. And you may not be waiting as long for mushrooms.
31:56 Eliah
So grain spawn tends to be used more for indoor cultivation, or sometimes for bad cultivation and wood chip beds or sawdust beds. But for growing on logs, definitely sawdust on our plug spawn is most typical. And something to think about in selecting between those two types of spawns. I think plug spawn is really easy because it's in a dowel form. So you drill a hole and hammer in and inoculated dowel. And it really requires hardly any tools just a drill bit and hammering in the plug. But I do think it tends to be a little bit better for more of like your hobbyist or home gardener. It colonizes a little bit slower than SATA spawn, it's also a little bit more expensive, because it's more labor intensive for us to produce. And it's also slower to process the logs, there's some tools you can get that aren't that expensive and inoculation tool, an angle grinder adapter and a specialized drill bit, that work really good with sawdust spawn and it speeds up the process a lot. So you know, for a home gardener, even a few $100 investment in tools might be something they don't really want to do. But if you're doing it commercially, and you're planning on producing hundreds of logs, it's definitely worth going to the sawdust spawn. And the spawn itself is cheaper so you can do more logs with it. And then just the amount of efficiency and speed to produce logs is a lot faster. So for people that are doing this commercially, I'd definitely suggest saw spawn over pugged spawn very much
33:49 Louis
second that i mean it's it's probably a third or a quarter of the time.
33:55 Nick
Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. And so buying, buying that, really a small investment of equipment to do that, you know,
34:03 Eliah
we sell some really great hand tools and power tool adapters for increasing efficiency. But there's actually from Japan and Asia, there's even automated systems that you can buy to inoculate logs very, very rapidly. We don't sell those and they're very rare in the US. But they exist in the world and for people that are doing 1000s of logs, that's often the type of system they're using.
34:41 Nick
You definitely recommend that angle grinder and then the adapter for the drill back over over to say just to drill
34:47 Eliah
Yeah, definitely it really speeds it up in the even the specialty mushroom bit which is just one bit it has a color so it hits a special depth that discharge is the shavings in the right direction, it's a high speed bit so it just it cuts really quickly. And you know, it's just it's a it's a very small tool, but it makes a big difference from the normal drill bit.
35:13 Louis
Yeah, once you get above a few logs, the plugs also take up more space. And so one bag of SATA spawn can inoculate far more logs, maybe 30 or so give or take, as opposed to like a bag of maybe 500 plugs that can do like half that.
35:36 Nick
And how, so they’re on dowels, How long are each one of these plugs.
35:41 Eliah
I this is I should totally know this. I think they're an inch. I think they're an inch long.
35:47 Louis
Yeah, an inch inch. And a little bit, maybe they're they look like the little plug, little dowels that you might make furniture with. And they they're probably made of like birch a lot of the time and angle grinder. Tools angle grinder adapter tools will often just have a stopper. Ours do that is the exact length for your plugs.
36:17 Nick
So what about bed production?
36:19 Eliah
Yeah. So bed cultivation is another really productive, great way to grow mushrooms on a farm. It's, like we mentioned with the log cultivation and forced flushing and fruiting, it's a lot harder to control the timing of your harvest. So that can be one challenge, but it's also much less labor and can be extremely productive. So you could grow. Wine caps are really popular to grow in wood chip beds, it's good to use at least a 50% hardwood wood chip mix, but you can just create, you know, home gardeners off and even just do this and the wood chip pads in their garden. But a commercial grower could have designated wood chip beds or wood chip mulch on trees or whatever and mix in the wind cap spawn. And wind capital is very vigorous and grow very abundantly. And it's a good way to almost like do something once that's about the same amount of work is mulching and then have another high value crop that's there. When it grows that's ready to harvest. It is hard to predict when it's going to grow. You know, it's pretty weather and temperature dependent the harvesting. But you can also do that with oyster mushrooms as well. And again, compared to indoor growing, or log growing, it's a little less predictable of when you're going to harvest but it's very easy, the amount of labor is just trapping a wood chip bed, mixing in spawn, maybe keeping it watered occasionally. And you know you're gonna get mushrooms out of that dead so Lou can chime in on this too. But I do think if you're kind of just want to start with a low investment of time and money and resources and just go for a bed and see what the production is it's a really good way to like start to dabble in mushroom growing.
38:28 Louis
The technique for for these species is very easy. We call it the lasagna method you really just layer in spawn and then woody material so on that note, you really can experiment with any agricultural waste that you have on the property. Wine cap we mentioned that you should have at least a nice chunk of it be hardwood, but oysters have been grown off of probably more things than any other mushroom out there. And so that could be really fun and successful growing off of whatever you got. You can also grow chestnuts and and naniko which are related mushrooms and there's some other things you could play around with too. That may not be quite as level one kind of beginner like for example the blewit you could you could try and grow to to diversify
39:28 Nick
yeah what what I really thinks neat about this this mushroom production whether it be logs or you know the bed cultivation is that you can use areas of your farm that that are not good for other things.
39:42 Eliah
And it's like the cool thing too about I mean logs sometimes most people have that have a farm have access to logs, but with the beds you know, literally you can use sawdust or wood chips or just you know like complete waste products in damp part of your property or a wooded part of your property that you know would not be a place that you would cultivate anything else. And that actually might be the best place for mushrooms to grow. So it does really complement, you know, kind of geographic locations on your farm where the mushrooms are going to grow well, but it's out of the way of where it's going to be heavily used for another crop.
40:26 Nick
One thing I wanted to talk about, we talked about, like watering them the environment they need to be kept in. And maybe you mentioned this a little bit, but as far as like putting them outside and like stalking them, I've seen I've seen people run like a wire through the through the woods, and then leave them on it. Is that is that what you would recommend? Are there other options? or is it
40:48 Eliah
Yeah, that's so you can actually for the first year when they're colonizing before they're going to be growing mushrooms, you could even stack them kind of like a wood pile like it could be log on log you don't want them right in the soil because they can start to rot so you might want to put them on a pallet or on some bricks or just anything to get them just a little bit off the ground or on a barn floor you know something just a little bit out of the dirt or soil. But once they are starting to grow and fruit and ready to harvest, they can't be all stacked on each other like a woodpile, because they'll just grow in other word and you won't be able to harvest them so having them on a wire or leaned up against a fence or even you can cradle stack them like a log cabin anything that you can they get airflow have space to grow and you can get your hands in there to harvest them is really advantageous So once your logs are in or have you know aged enough that they're colonized and ready to fruit, you do want them to be leaning on something or in a cradle or a way that they have airflow space to grow and you can pick them
42:07 Nick
and I did see a stockpile of inoculated logs with shiitake the other day that somebody had started but I think abandoned because they had moved on to a different positions it was on this farm and so I was in looking at the other day and I could see that there was shiitakes like in there but they were like growing and they were pushing into the other log and I think they probably should have been harvested it
42:37 Eliah
won't stop them from fruiting they're still going to grow in fruit but they're just going to smush into other logs and kind of be default you know not be sellable. And if there's no space that just kind of try to grow wherever they can but yeah, it's definitely a little sad when they get forgotten like that but they're still happy growing.
42:59 Louis
And you're going to need to check your these logs often because bugs like mushrooms, slugs like mushrooms. Even deer will nibble on mushrooms from time to time and so you're going to need to get there first and monitor your your logs closely.
43:18 Nick
Louis you read my mind! Can you see my questions from over here is literally my next question so slugs deer
43:28 Louis
squirrels yeah a lot of things will take little bites out of your mushrooms and at that point you really can't sell them The worst is his bugs and slugs and so just getting there quick unknown on harvest thing you should try and get things younger rather than older. The margin the edge of the cap you want it with most of most species actually you want them the cap to still be like curved over you don't want it to have flattened out completely. It has better shelf life that way is more easily marketable sometimes tastier,
44:12 Eliah
you'd kind of think of it as like I mean there's a pretty bad analogy but a little bit like an umbrella shape versus like a flat umbrella is not a good thing like you don't want it to like get to like flat you still want it to be like a bit bell shaped and like Louise describing
44:31 Nick
after you harvest it How long can you hold on to that mushroom before you have to say like, it's time to put it in the compost pile or throw it away in I guess are there certain like environmental conditions that you can create to extend that storage life I put it in a bag or something like that
44:51 Eliah
paper bags. You know, for a consumer someone in their fridge does really well because basically if there's too much moisture The mushroom can rot. And if there's too little it can dry out. So in a walk in cooler, you know in some kind of harvesting bin that has a little bit of airflow, but not a ton of airflow is really ideal. And under good conditions they can last a week to 10 days and still pretty nice depending on the species different species last for different amounts of time, but you don't want to store it in a plastic bag totally sealed off and you also if you just had it totally out in the open, they'd still be totally edible but they just dry they get really dry, which wouldn't be ideal either. So you know, if I take them home, to just eat at home, I just put them in a paper bag and that kind of lets a little bit of moisture in and out but not a lot, which works pretty well. But commercially, we actually have special stackable plastic mushroom bins that have a lot of perforation in them. So by being stackable, they see each top seals the other one from having a lot of airflow but because of the perforation, they let some air flow through so it's probably pretty similar to a lot of like vegetable harvesting bins.
46:16 Louis
And one more note on that you you should try with some mushrooms again, which should talkies this isn't the case but like with oysters, you may not want to stack them too deep. So a single layer if possible is better and will add to that shelf life.
46:35 Nick
Yeah, so I can see that being really useful in terms of like I've planned out with my flesh when the machines are going to come and I have a market you know this day this day in this day and so you know flush those mushrooms out harvest them and storm for maybe that period and then look into your your next flush stagger that that harvest throughout the growing season.
47:00 Louis
Absolutely that can be it can be tricky to know Okay, I have a market this day, do I I have watching some mushrooms grow too I harvest them now younger knowing that they're gonna have a longer shelf life, or do I harvest them later. And when they're a little bit older one
47:19 Eliah
thing that I'll say and I think it's kind of the beauty of people getting to buy mushrooms from local mushroom growers and at farmer's markets or restaurants. But I have definitely become a mushroom snob. And with the mushrooms you see even specialty mushrooms you see at Whole Foods or in a lot of grocery stores are totally edible, totally like good mushrooms but they are so haggard and beat up and like just look like mushrooms, you know are delicate. And like the amount of handling and time they're getting from coming from some big mushroom farms. It's like by the ton that consumers getting them. They're just crack dried out and look like in my mind, like just mushrooms. So haggard, but the amazing thing about people getting to get local mushrooms is it's just you know, a quality of mushroom. And also just like I don't know, the beauty of the mushrooms that you would not be able to get anywhere else because they are so delicate and fragile.
48:34 Nick
What's like, what's the biggest mistake you see new mushroom producers do and
48:38 Eliah
I think one thing is patience a lot of times because people are so unsure about how they're doing it, and they don't necessarily feel that confident they'll do inoculate a bunch of logs, and then you know, nine months later or even a year later and just think it didn't work. But you know, whatever, maybe the timing or the season was a little colder and maybe those logs took a year and a half to colonize before they're gonna grow. And so a lot of times I have people tell me that it didn't work. And sometimes something went wrong, but a lot of times I just tell them just, you know, be patient and keep keeping an eye on them. And you know, they often are still successful and you know, those logs you saw on the farm the other day, who knows maybe someone just really went and did something else and abandon them, but maybe they kind of gave up because they didn't have patience. So I see people kind of giving up too quickly. Just because it's like a new experience for them and not realizing that you know, it does take time before you get your first harvest.
49:52 Louis
Definitely that very, very important. I've had people come up to me and say, you know, my logs didn't work and I throw them out. I said well When you do, oh, eight months ago, well, you didn't wait long enough, you know you didn't give it that time. Sometimes it's more like a year and a half, you know, it's not super exact. A couple other things come to mind. Sometimes people sort of ignore the species rules, and they should not. I've had people come up to me and talk about inoculating. And it's not till halfway through the conversation that I realized they inoculated white pine, or something, and that's why it's not going to work. And so they didn't really pay much attention to their wood species. Another thing is the age of the wood, you really should get wood as fresh as possible. Some people intentionally will let the wood rest for a few weeks up to a month even after it's cut, and that can that can be okay. But after a few months of you know, warm weather, there are competitors, it does not work as well and it's not worth the hard work. And then you put in
51:08 Eliah
one of the biggest things that when people really do have failure is drying out. And so like Louise saying The good thing about cutting a healthy living tree is that tree has a lot of moisture in it, it was just growing. And when the wood gets old, it can both be quite dried out and it can have other wild fungi already growing in it. So some things to really make sure I'd say one of the biggest things of failure is drying out is having freshly cut wood. also trying to keep it in an area that's not super windy or sunny. You know it doesn't it is outdoors. It can be under some trees or in a shady or area but you do want to try to prevent it from drying out and then also waxing over the holes properly. Sometimes people don't do that and what will happen is if you don't latch properly, or sometimes people even forget to wax the plugs of the solder spawn will literally just dry out very quickly like they might dry out in three weeks and not even get to colonize because all the moisture that was in that plug or that SATA spawn just was the wind or whatever just dried it out but having the wax cover over it really retains that moisture and those cells are still vibrant and vigorous and are growing into the log. So really being conscientious about preventing the logs from drying out I think it's important Okay,
52:44 Nick
great, thank you and then I think just kind of one one fun question at the end do each of you have a favorite mushroom? Probably a tough question for a guy with a mushroom shirt on.
52:56 Louis
It is a tough question and it can depend on the year and the day and this part of the season whether you're talking about wild mushrooms or cultivated mushrooms Do you have them do you want me to talk about cultivated mushrooms or why or can Wilds be in the yeah and the list
53:11 Nick
put a wild wild card in
53:15 Louis
With wilds in fall there are a lot out right now so it's on the brain in the fall we get it's not maybe maybe one you guys have heard of hen of the woods grifola frondosa is just fantastic and it's so exciting that you can get big ones they can be you know 20 pounds or so you can get giant giant ones so they're plentiful and they are just so good. I really really do like them a lot I think they're better than chicken in the woods and more consistent so that's really one of my favorite I'm always very excited when that comes around.
53:52 Eliah
I feel like I have to answer that with three mushrooms that have been one of my favorite wild mushrooms as a black trumpet. I just there have such a unique delicious flavor and then for cultivated mushrooms I really even though they're pretty common I really love shut talkies and King trumpet
54:17 Louis
Oh for cultivated I'm going to agree with with Elia and say that the king trumpet and shut talkie are probably my favorite cultivated to thank you
54:29 Nick
once again Eliah. Thanks, Louis for meeting with me down here today and Westbrook, Maine. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you both.
54:38 Louis
Thanks, Nick.
54:38 Eliah
Awesome. Thank you so much, Nick.
54:42 Heather Bryant
Thanks again for joining the conversation about agriculture in the North Country. And be sure to check out our web page extension.unh.edu forward slash north where you can find this podcast information about the North Country fruit and vegetable conference and instructions for printing. speeding and episode discussions. The North Country fruit and vegetable Podcast is a production of the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension in equal opportunity educator and employer. views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of the university, its trustees or its volunteers, inclusion or exclusion of commercial products and this podcast does not imply endorsement. The University of New Hampshire US Department of Agriculture in New Hampshire counties cooperate to provide extension programming in the Granite State. Learn more@extension.unh.edu
