Out-Doors by Elizabeth Bassett
Mushrooms: Popping Up All Over On Toad Road, Arthur Hynes is getting ready to inoculate a heap of wood chips with mushroom spawn. I beg your pardon? “I buy inoculants from Fungi Perfecti (fungi.com),” Arthur says. “I prepare a bed of wood chips, pour on the mixture, add sawdust, and voila, before too long mushrooms appear.” “It’s important to try to find hardwood chips,” Arthur says. “I called the utility company. When they were working in the neighborhood they dropped a load of wood chips at my house.” The inoculant that Arthur buys from Fungi Perfecti is incorporated into a bag of sawdust. The bed is a lasagna of wood chips and sawdust, layers of each sandwiching the inoculant or spawn. Arthur plants
stropharia rugoso annulata, known as garden giant, king Stropharia, or wine cap mushrooms. “In past years I have planted in the spring and had fruit by the end of summer,” he says. Arthur follows the work and research of Fungi Perfecti and its founder, Paul Stamets. “Stamets studied at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington,” he says, “and has been working ever since with mushrooms in the Northwest. I used the instructions in Stamets’ book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms.” Stamets has written other books, including Mycelium Running, available at the Pierson Library Peter Swift prepares in Shelburne, and Psilocybin Philo Road. Mushrooms of the World. Arthur also forages in the wild for mushrooms. “The first ones to look for each spring are morels,” he says. “They are quite rare, only available for about two weeks, and can generally be found beneath dead elm trees.” –––– In his barn on Mt. Philo Road, Peter Swift is
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shiitake mushroom spawn in a log in his barn on Mt.
introducing shiitake mushroom spawn to oak logs. “I use a high-speed angle drill to make rows of holes around the logs,” Peter says. He pokes a syringe into a plastic bag containing shiitake spawn or inoculant and then fills the newly drilled holes with plugs of spawn. Peter buys his supplies from Field and Forest
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