My Third Eye Has Been Opened

It seemed like every time we mentioned we were going to take a mushroom cultivation course, no matter how old, people always said, "Are you going to learn about magic mushrooms? I'd say that after this course I did indeed learn about the magic of mushrooms, but not "magic mushrooms". Out of the 100,000 species of mushrooms, we've classified 10,000 of them, and know how to grow maybe a hundred or less. To those that have "opened their third eye" from eating psilocybin mushrooms, it is only half open.

The positive implications that mushrooms can have on the world are countless. From bioremediation to the immunization building aspect of Reishi tea mushroom will save the world.

Ok, enough of the serious talk, we had a great time at Mushroom Mountain in Liberty SC even though mapquest is horrible if your not staying on the interstate. Yes, I know google maps is great too but they didn't even register the address. However, we made it and learned a great deal about using mushrooms in every aspect of our lives.

The Hansen family and I drove up on Friday afternoon and stayed the night in Greenville SC. Half of us stayed back for a birthday party and Hugh and I drove 45 minutes to Mushroom Mountain. We were greeted with tea and homemade bread and sat down on a straw bail awaiting for the rest of the students to arrive. Tradd Cotter and his wife Olga were there to provide instruction and a little comic relief. We learned that you can use mushrooms to eat paper and cardboard, which really helps with recycling. You can then add it to your lager compost pile and have perfect compost or you can use it to spawn more substrate, cool huh?




After that he showed us how to make a mushroom bed to grow Morels but if you do it it will take about a year to cultivate. It is definitely worth the wait. People have been trying to patent a good method for sometime now and this is the best one so far.



He then showed us how to grow mushrooms from logs. You have to use hardwoods and it takes up to a year to fruit but it is well worth the wait considering it can produce for two years delicious mushrooms.



Another use of mushrooms that I'm eager to try is the symbiotic use that you can use with them. If you grow them along with tomatoes you can grow five times as much and only have to water them 3 times a month. Here is a picture of mushrooms growing with swiss chard. You can't see them but the mycelium are in the wheat bales.


We had a great time at this work session and I would recommend it to anyone who likes mushrooms. It is one of the easiest things you could raise and can be very beneficial to you and the environment.