Mushroom post 2 - detailed instructions

As I wrote in the first installment of the mushroom post, a few weeks ago I purchased an indoor mushroom kit (king oysters). I intend to propagate this kit, so that I can enjoy these mushrooms as long as I possibly can forever.

Reading up, I came across several approaches to mushroom propagation. I'm not 100% sure which will work best for me, so these are the experiments I will set up:

1. Stem butt propagation - to make new mycelium from a single mushroom, follow this video or the     step-by-step instructions in this webpage. Should work well for oysters, king oysters, and morels.     While in the video the mushroom is peeled and the stem is sliced, most websites (and the Russian       folklore) tell you to use the very bottom of the stem as-is, rather than peeling it. If this works, the       next step is just as described for the mycelium propagation approach below - new substrate,   

  humidity.           

  This step requires only corrugated cardboard and an air-tight container.

Morel anatomy. From http://www.waldeneffect.org/

2. Propagation of the mycelium - as opposed to the previous approach, where the actual fruiting body     of the mushroom is used, this approach uses the mycelium itself. This is the      

    stuff growing inside of the mushroom kit. Once the first flush of mushrooms passes, I will take out     some of the mycelium from the mushroom kit, and will inoculate a new container filled with     

    pasteurized substrate (see #3 for substrate choices). The general approach seems to be 500 g    

    spawn for every 2.5 kg of moist substrate (based on here). I will be using the bucket approach.   

    Here is another bucket tutorial, on coffee substrate. Don't have buckets? Use any other container 

    with existing holes (like a laundry basket) or pre-drilled holes, and place it in an intact tote, or even     a large plastic bag. Beautiful pictures with step-by-step instructions here, just click on the "+" 

    sign of each step. And yet another tutorial, covering growing mushrooms on straw, with step-by-       step instructions, using only plastic bags.

3. Substrate choices - from what I have read, oysters (and king oysters) will be happy on coffee    

    grounds and straw; shiitake (unless specifically the straw strain) will want a mix of hardwood    

    sawdust and straw, and cinnamon caps will require sawdust. 

Since I have available wood shavings, and should also be able to find straw, I'm planning on setting up four growing experiments: 1) stem propagation on corrugated cardboard, 2) mycelium propagation on coffee grounds, 3) mycelium propagation on straw, and 4) mycelium propagation on a mix of wood shavings and straw. In the next few weeks, I should be able to start all of these. I will be taking pictures to record progress on all four, we'll see how it goes!

A beautiful, and completely unrelated king bolete. But look how gorgeous it is! From photonaturalist.files.wordpress.com.

Growing mushrooms at home - post 1, general approach

I've been wanting to grow my own mushrooms at home ever since I have come across this picture.

Oyster mushrooms, growing in a bucket on a kitchen counter. From www.milkwood.net

Imagine that, gourmet mushrooms, available whenever you feel like it, fresh, and inexpensive! Growing up in Russia, mushrooms were a huge thing. Everyone picked wild ones in the fall, and most people could identify dozens of edible mushrooms. 

Long story short, a few weeks ago, a few of my friends and I bought mushroom kits for indoor growing; these were shiitake, cinnamon cap, oyster, and king oyster kits, from Wylie Mycologicals, a Canadian company.

The kits come with very simple instructions - for most, the buyer has to do nothing, until small mushrooms are seen inside the bag. Then, a slit is made in the bag, and the mushrooms are allowed to grow bigger. Once they reach desired size, they are cut off the bag and used as needed. The bag is then resealed, and another flush of mushrooms will be expected after a few days. This process is repeated, until the bag feels light, as the substrate feeding the body of the mushroom, the mycelium, is spent. 

King oyster kit. How cool is that? (image from http://static.webshopapp.com/)

The magic part is that if you keep feeding the mycelium, it should, if all goes right, keep on going forever. So, for the initial price of the mushroom kit, one should, theoretically, be able to have a lifetime of free mushrooms! After reading (a lot), these are the general rules:

1) The new substrate can be made of combinations of straw, used coffee grounds, cardboard, grain, wood chips, and sawdust (usually hardwood, NOT softwood), depending on the species - different mushrooms need different foods.

2) The substrate should be pasteurized, and the container, your hands, and all the tools should be thoroughly cleaned with soap, vinegar, or peroxide. Easiest approach for the substrate - fill a large pot with water, bring to 80C, take off the burner, add the substrate, and let it sit for 1-2 h (to pasteurize, it needs to stay above 60C for 1-2 h). Let the substrate cool, strain, and you're good to go.  

3) Humidity - lots and lots of it. The new substrate should be thoroughly moist, but not soaking - the mycelium needs air, and can drown if there is too much water. While the mycelium is colonizing the new substrate, humidity should also be high. 

                                       Oyster mushrooms, grown in a laundry basket. From http://velacreations.com/.

For details an step-by-step instructions on how to make it happen, check the next mushroom post!

Charged up

Recently Hydro Quebec announced plans for extending their DCQC network to allow further EV road trips in la belle province. By the end of 2016, an EV will be able to travel from the Ontario border to Rivière-du-Loup (and beyond) completely stress-free. The problem, as identified in my previous post, is that the infrastructure hits the New Brunswick border and stops:

Source: AVEQ/HydroQuebec

Spaced every 45-70km like HydroQuebec's plan, the following stations could extend this network through New Brunswick on the Trans-Canada:

• Edmundston, Grand Falls, Florenceville, Woodstock, Nackawic, Fredericton, Jemseg, Havelock, Moncton, Sackville, Cape Jourimain

Continuing the network along Route 1 with stations in Sussex, Quispamsis, Lepreau, St. Stephen

And one in Welsford to connect Saint John to Fredericton.

Map of proposed DCQC network, showing my southern bias

Connections to current networks can be made by adding stations in:

• Cabano, QC to connect Edmundston to HydroQuebec's netowrk
• Beddington, ME to connect St. Stephen to the enormous US network
• Oxford, NS to connect Sackville (NB) to Truro and Halifax

Sixteen stations (+3 outside NB) would get us quite a network, but at $50-100k  per station it's unlikely that anyone is ready to step-up and cover the bill. A less ambitious network would start with stations every ~100km, which might create redundancy in the future, but gets the basic network setup:

A simple solution to cover the Trans-Canada through the province.

Six stations might be an easier sell to the public, and is still a respectable route for the time being. Three more stations in Hampton, Welsford and Cape Jourimain would round-out southern NB, and get you to PEI and NS.

Currently, Level 2 chargers overlap these locations a bit. The difference is speed: Level 2 is an overnight or all-day affair (4-8 hours), where DCQC is more like filling up with gasoline (admittedly while also grabbing a coffee and a bathroom break) at 30 minutes. This means long distance road trips become logistically easy, compared to the haphazard method of charging in campgrounds and homes. However, chargers at hotels in Fredericton, Moncton, Grand falls, Edmundston, and Woodstock shift the priority to getting stations in Coles Island (Sussex if you want to cover Route 1 at the same time) and Perth-Andover/Florenceville. Welsford seems like a no-brainer between Fredericton and Saint John, it's also the station that would be most useful to me (hint, hint).

Gardening, year 3 - starting plants from seed

This is our third year gardening, third year of starting plants from seed, and third year of learning. In my first year, we used the regular seed starting trays you see in any store. I hated them. The plastic was flimsy, the plants got root bound, or the roots escaped into the tray below and got mangled during transplanting. The trays lasted for 2-3 uses, and then disintegrated. Not ideal.

Seed starting trays, one of the available sizes (photo from amazon.com)

In our second year, I used a mix of the surviving trays and toilet paper rolls - save the rolls once you're done with the toilet paper. Then in the spring, fill them tightly with potting mix, water thoroughly, and plant the seeds. Once the time comes to transplant, pop the whole thing in the ground and cover. The cardboard will disintegrate over time. This approach was pretty good for things that don't like their roots disturbed (carrots, peas). However, the rolls got moldy and unpleasant over time, and roots escaped sideways into the tray, resulting in a bit of a struggle during transplanting time.

Ready to go (photo from gardeningclan.com)

This year I came across the technique of air pruning, the approach where some of the plant's roots are exposed to air, after which the tips die and the root branches (here's more detail). The result is a branched, healthy root system, with no root-bound plants.

Air-pruned roots on the left, root-bound ones on the right (photo from geoplanter.com)

There are quite a few different containers and approaches to this, from fabric pots, to planting in shopping bags, to nursery-quality air pruning pots. To start the seeds, I tried two different approaches - one making seed starter pots out of newspaper (instructions here), and one using net cups, following the advice of the air-pruning guru, Larry Hall (here are his FB page; note that it's a closed group and you'll need to be added by the admin, and his YouTube channel).

I bought 100 cups on Amazon (net cups). They're fairly sturdy, and should last quite a few years, especially if I'm nice to them. I made another 100 or more newspaper cups to accommodate the rest of the starters. Silly of me, I didn't do a proper control, where you would plant the same seeds in the two growing containers, to see which one does best. However, so far most of the net-cup plants did much better than the newspaper ones. I did not expect such a difference (and perhaps that's why I didn't do the control bit). But I know that I will be buying another 100-200 cups for next year's season.

Tomato comparison - the best of the newspaper cups is on the right; the left is second-best net cup results. The very best tomatoes have already been moved to larger pots...

One extremely helpful tip that I read about this spring was to use aluminum foil as a reflective surface between the seedlings and the rooms. When growing seedlings on windowsills, they end up bending towards the light source. To reduce bending, the plants need to be turned once or twice a day, which is a chore if you have quite a few of them. The aluminum foil does two things: 1) it doubles up the amount of light the plants receive, which results in shorter, sturdier plants, and 2) it prevents the plants from bending. As a result, the plants only need to be turned once a week, if that - I haven't turned many of my seedlings in weeks now, and they're only slightly off-center...

My tinfoil-hat plants... Cucumber starters in this picture. The shiny side of the aluminum should be facing the window.

The last lesson I learned in starting plants this year is that peppers are exceedingly slow. I started both peppers and tomatoes at the same time, mid-February or so, following the instructions on the seed packets. Next year I'll be starting peppers a month earlier (mid-January), and tomatoes a month later (mid-March). This should allow us to have peppers earlier in the season, and save me the issue of having plants that are too big for their homes and need transplanting into larger pots.

Tomatoes on the left, peppers on the right. Oops.

In the next post, I'll have some pictures about the different garden area I'm intending to use for planting all these things. Yay, spring is finally here!

Wattle and lasagna composting

Goal - have raised beds. Price - not a whole lot, if any. Solution - alder branches, cut during the clearing of some of our property, a pile of manure sourced locally over the summer, bags of fallen leaves, provided by friends and unsuspecting people throughout Quispamsis, NB. The alder branches can be used for wattle weaving, where branches are woven together to create fences, raised beds, erosion control structures, etc.

This is what it looks like when you know what you're doing

We had a whole pile of alders lined up. Josh cleared some during the summer, and made me a whole pile of straight, long, medium-width branches of alders.

A restored Templars' monastery. Can I live there?

We also had piles of manure, and during November, we collected quite a few bags of raked leaves from the unsuspecting dwellers of Quispamsis, NB. In addition, we had a few bags collected and/or dropped off by friends (thank you, everyone!). There was also an abundance of untreated, brown cardboard from moving boxes, and some kitchen scraps made by us and also donated by relatives. To put it all together, we used the lasagna bed approach, also called sheet mulching (here and here).

We started off by putting in the stakes for the raised bed (made out of straight-ish, thick pieces of alder).

In the middle, we placed a layer of cardboard. Any small branches were chopped off and plopped in the middle of the bed as well. With time, they will form a tiny hugel bed (hugel who?? Hugelkultur is German for "mound culture", the art of burying a mix of wood and planting on top of the mound; this creates a self-watering, self-fertilizing planting bed). 

Then we started placing the pieces of wattle along the border of the bed, weaving it around the stakes. Not a thing of beauty, for sure, but it should work, which is all we're after at this point. Maybe generation 2.0 will be a more aesthetically pleasing version.

From left to right: 1) first couple of rows of wattle, 2) filled a couple of layers of compost, manure, and fallen leaves, and 3) side view of the layers within the bed. The green growth on top of the manure pile was added as "green manure" to the bed.

Man, worms loved that manure pile.

Once the bed is full, we placed the last layer of leaves and covered with some cardboard, so that the leaves don't blow away. And repeat. Since then, we have made another two beds, just off the side of the first two. Those were left empty and have been acting as our compost pile over the winter - we place bucketfuls of compost, cover with leaves, and walk away. In the spring, we'll be able to plant hungry vegetables, like squashes, straight into these compost beds. The more gently creatures, like tomatoes, can go into the manure-leaves beds and be happy. Cost - $free.99 for all components, help from friends - priceless, product - hopefully a happy garden :-) Thanks for everyone who has helped out!