Viewfinder: How-to Grow Mushrooms at Home

Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary hosted a fascinating workshop on Saturday morning with Tamar Haspel of Starving off the Land.com, who taught the crowd of 12 local residents how to grow their own mushrooms. Following an informative and instructive slide show, Haspel guided the participants as they inoculated oak logs, which will hopefully produce shittake mushrooms within a year's time.

The process is quite simple and is suggested to be done in the Spring or the Fall. Essentially you drill holes (spread out in a diamond pattern), usually around 20, in a cut, oak log that is no less than 2 weeks old. You then fill the holes with mushroom dowels that are available online. You then hammer the dowels into the holes and seal them with a wax to protect them. Then in up to a year's time, you will have mushrooms!

Ideal conditions are damp and shady and each harvest will vary greatly in production level and mushroom type.

Receive more details from:

Tamar Haspel of www.StarvingofftheLand.com

or

Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary
345 Bone Hill Road, P.O. Box 235
Cummaquid, MA 02637
longpasture@massaudubon.org