Mushrooms are full of protein, and many contain trace nutrients that are difficult to get in a regular diet absent of mushrooms. This is in part due to the fact that mushrooms are not plants. They don't produce their own food, they break down stuff they find in their environment. That makes them particularly useful in converting things that don't have nutritional value for people or animals into something that does. While feeding people sawdust is generally frowned upon, mushrooms grown on sawdust are delicious and nutritious. They can also rapidly break down your garden waste and produce a fantastic compost after the mushroom has run its course.
A mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus. Mushrooms release spores, not seeds, but can also reproduce by cloning. If you'd like to start growing your own mushrooms, it can be as easy as sticking a chunk of a live mushroom into some wet spent coffee grounds and keeping it under loose plastic. It can also be as complicated as what I do, which involves pressure cookers, laminar flow hoods, and science and stuff.
One variety I grow is Wellington Oyster. The entire oyster family is relatively easy to grow, and most are tasty. Additionally they produce colors from white to blue to yellow to pink... and while some of these colorful varieties aren't as appetizing and lose some color during cooking, they still have a good flavor and can contribute to a very colorful mushroom patch.
These can be grown indoors or out, and are a very fast-growing and prolific variety well suited to beginners. They prefer wood, but can be grown on coconut coir found in a pet store as reptile bedding. Ideally though, you can use some straw, dead wood or sawdust.
Other varieties I've grown are Lion's Mane, Shiitake, and the medicinal mushrooms Reishi and Turkey Tail. Reishi has been shown in a recent NIST study to make chemotherapy 27% more successful over a broad spectrum of cancers. The company Aloha Medicinals (strangely enough located in Nevada) produces a product made of 6 concentrated varieties of cancer-fighting mushroom extracts that, while they can't say it in the U.S. due to FDA regulation, is used as the sole treatment for cancer in several third-world countries.
So there's my elevator presentation on why you should care about mushrooms and possibly consider cultivating them.
A great article called "Low Tech Growing" can be found at this link: http://www.alohaculturebank.com/low-tech-growing.html
If you decide to give mushrooms a go, I'm happy to answer questions or provide cultures of the edible and medicinal mushrooms at my disposal! Don't buy the $125+ cultures from the link above. Aloha caters to commercial producers, and home hobby growers can make do with far less expensive sources found on the web, at Amazon, etc.
A mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus. Mushrooms release spores, not seeds, but can also reproduce by cloning. If you'd like to start growing your own mushrooms, it can be as easy as sticking a chunk of a live mushroom into some wet spent coffee grounds and keeping it under loose plastic. It can also be as complicated as what I do, which involves pressure cookers, laminar flow hoods, and science and stuff.
One variety I grow is Wellington Oyster. The entire oyster family is relatively easy to grow, and most are tasty. Additionally they produce colors from white to blue to yellow to pink... and while some of these colorful varieties aren't as appetizing and lose some color during cooking, they still have a good flavor and can contribute to a very colorful mushroom patch.
These can be grown indoors or out, and are a very fast-growing and prolific variety well suited to beginners. They prefer wood, but can be grown on coconut coir found in a pet store as reptile bedding. Ideally though, you can use some straw, dead wood or sawdust.
Other varieties I've grown are Lion's Mane, Shiitake, and the medicinal mushrooms Reishi and Turkey Tail. Reishi has been shown in a recent NIST study to make chemotherapy 27% more successful over a broad spectrum of cancers. The company Aloha Medicinals (strangely enough located in Nevada) produces a product made of 6 concentrated varieties of cancer-fighting mushroom extracts that, while they can't say it in the U.S. due to FDA regulation, is used as the sole treatment for cancer in several third-world countries.
So there's my elevator presentation on why you should care about mushrooms and possibly consider cultivating them.
A great article called "Low Tech Growing" can be found at this link: http://www.alohaculturebank.com/low-tech-growing.html
If you decide to give mushrooms a go, I'm happy to answer questions or provide cultures of the edible and medicinal mushrooms at my disposal! Don't buy the $125+ cultures from the link above. Aloha caters to commercial producers, and home hobby growers can make do with far less expensive sources found on the web, at Amazon, etc.
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