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DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil by Willoughby Arevalo (New Society Publishers 2019) $29.95 9780865718951
Review by Caroline Woodward (BCBW 2019)
Here, where I live on a tiny island, there are no edible mushrooms except perhaps some wild ones I can't identify with sufficient confidence even with my trusty guide, All The Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms (Ten Speed Press, 1991) by David Arora.
"There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters."
This pithy old ditty prevents me from picking anything except chanterelles and morels which, sadly, do not grow on this island. Our groceries are delivered by Coast Guard helicopter once a month and the half-kilo of white or brown criminis I order from Thrifty Foods in Victoria do not last much longer than ten days. We devour them in salads, stir-fries, omelettes, and stews or baked with grains like barley for hearty winter casseroles. Then we must wait another twenty days for our store-bought 'shrooms.
But that's about to change. Because now I've read DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil by Willoughby Arevalo who is so passionate about his subject, it is a wonder mere book covers can contain his enthusiasm.
Arevalo has been entranced by all things fungal since the age of thirteen when his benevolent and trusting parents let him cook dishes of wild mushrooms he'd foraged. He read books about them, hunted them in the redwood forests, and took a college level course on mushrooms while majoring in visual arts. Had there been a Bachelor of Mycology, I am sure Arevalo would have graduated with distinction.
Arevalo is a doer as well as an artist and educator. He approached a mushroom farmer selling them in his local farmers market in northern California and he soon had a job for the next two years inoculating grain spawn in a lab growing gourmet commercial mushrooms.
'Grain spawn' is just one of the many interesting scientific terms and words I learned in this well-written book, which combines zeal with scientific and horticultural rigour and manages to convince people like me that yes, it is possible to grow delicious mushrooms no matter how little space seems to be available in your apartment or condo or bungalow. As Arevalo states, he now lives in a basement suite in Vancouver, barely over 700 sq.ft., with his wife and their daughter and he has projects growing in all sorts of places, indoors and out.
Photographs of a wide variety of mushrooms being cultivated by operators like Northside Fungi in Enderby and All The Mushrooms in Powell River underline the fact that we Canucks can, and do, grow all kinds of gourmet mushrooms.
This guide, while being thorough about introducing the would-be 'shroom grower to the ecology necessary to cultivate specific kinds, is not intimidating. In fact, it’s encouraging and it demystifies hazy notions I certainly harboured of long dark chambers or stainless-steel laboratories underground filled with ghostly mushrooms.
The line drawings by Carmen Elisabeth Olsen and the high-quality colour photographs throughout are invaluable because, as with attempting to identify the gills and caps and stems of unfamiliar wild mushrooms, the novice grower needs to know what a certain stage of mushroom growth 'should' look like.
In DIY Mushroom Cultivation we learn what mushrooms need to survive, and then thrive; what equipment and materials to prepare; and exactly how to go about doing that with shredded newspapers or sterilized canning jars or sawdust, recycling ice-cream pails, plant pot saucers, and snow fencing. The possibilities are only as limited as your ingenuity.
Growing mushrooms is all about using stuff you have around the house, garage or garden shed. As with making bread or beer or blackberry mead, there are steps to follow when using yeasts. There are clear explanations of how to find and use liquid cultures and make grain spawn, how to grow mushrooms on logs and stumps as well as in beds, glass jars, and anything else that is handy.
DIY Mushroom Cultivation offers crucial tips on avoiding contamination and when and how to harvest, preserve and cook mushrooms or use them for medicinal purposes and even large scale bio-remediation. It all makes for fascinating reading. Did you know oyster mushrooms can break down motor oil? And, my favourite mushroom name ever, the Hideous Gomphidius is capable of neutralizing radio-active waste? Speculative fiction writers have been on to them for decades.
A handy chapter profiling thirteen species helps growers focus on the mushrooms they might like to grow first, be it Shaggy Mane, Enoki, or Turkey Tail. The appendices include useful resources: books, journal articles, websites, and best of all, sources in the U.S. and Canada for buying your very own mushroom starter supplies.
Happy growing and bon appetit!
Review by Caroline Woodward (BCBW 2019)
Here, where I live on a tiny island, there are no edible mushrooms except perhaps some wild ones I can't identify with sufficient confidence even with my trusty guide, All The Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms (Ten Speed Press, 1991) by David Arora.
"There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters."
This pithy old ditty prevents me from picking anything except chanterelles and morels which, sadly, do not grow on this island. Our groceries are delivered by Coast Guard helicopter once a month and the half-kilo of white or brown criminis I order from Thrifty Foods in Victoria do not last much longer than ten days. We devour them in salads, stir-fries, omelettes, and stews or baked with grains like barley for hearty winter casseroles. Then we must wait another twenty days for our store-bought 'shrooms.
But that's about to change. Because now I've read DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil by Willoughby Arevalo who is so passionate about his subject, it is a wonder mere book covers can contain his enthusiasm.
Arevalo has been entranced by all things fungal since the age of thirteen when his benevolent and trusting parents let him cook dishes of wild mushrooms he'd foraged. He read books about them, hunted them in the redwood forests, and took a college level course on mushrooms while majoring in visual arts. Had there been a Bachelor of Mycology, I am sure Arevalo would have graduated with distinction.
Arevalo is a doer as well as an artist and educator. He approached a mushroom farmer selling them in his local farmers market in northern California and he soon had a job for the next two years inoculating grain spawn in a lab growing gourmet commercial mushrooms.
'Grain spawn' is just one of the many interesting scientific terms and words I learned in this well-written book, which combines zeal with scientific and horticultural rigour and manages to convince people like me that yes, it is possible to grow delicious mushrooms no matter how little space seems to be available in your apartment or condo or bungalow. As Arevalo states, he now lives in a basement suite in Vancouver, barely over 700 sq.ft., with his wife and their daughter and he has projects growing in all sorts of places, indoors and out.
Photographs of a wide variety of mushrooms being cultivated by operators like Northside Fungi in Enderby and All The Mushrooms in Powell River underline the fact that we Canucks can, and do, grow all kinds of gourmet mushrooms.
This guide, while being thorough about introducing the would-be 'shroom grower to the ecology necessary to cultivate specific kinds, is not intimidating. In fact, it’s encouraging and it demystifies hazy notions I certainly harboured of long dark chambers or stainless-steel laboratories underground filled with ghostly mushrooms.
The line drawings by Carmen Elisabeth Olsen and the high-quality colour photographs throughout are invaluable because, as with attempting to identify the gills and caps and stems of unfamiliar wild mushrooms, the novice grower needs to know what a certain stage of mushroom growth 'should' look like.
In DIY Mushroom Cultivation we learn what mushrooms need to survive, and then thrive; what equipment and materials to prepare; and exactly how to go about doing that with shredded newspapers or sterilized canning jars or sawdust, recycling ice-cream pails, plant pot saucers, and snow fencing. The possibilities are only as limited as your ingenuity.
Growing mushrooms is all about using stuff you have around the house, garage or garden shed. As with making bread or beer or blackberry mead, there are steps to follow when using yeasts. There are clear explanations of how to find and use liquid cultures and make grain spawn, how to grow mushrooms on logs and stumps as well as in beds, glass jars, and anything else that is handy.
DIY Mushroom Cultivation offers crucial tips on avoiding contamination and when and how to harvest, preserve and cook mushrooms or use them for medicinal purposes and even large scale bio-remediation. It all makes for fascinating reading. Did you know oyster mushrooms can break down motor oil? And, my favourite mushroom name ever, the Hideous Gomphidius is capable of neutralizing radio-active waste? Speculative fiction writers have been on to them for decades.
A handy chapter profiling thirteen species helps growers focus on the mushrooms they might like to grow first, be it Shaggy Mane, Enoki, or Turkey Tail. The appendices include useful resources: books, journal articles, websites, and best of all, sources in the U.S. and Canada for buying your very own mushroom starter supplies.
Happy growing and bon appetit!
