Morel Patches Finished

…So I took an hour this week to go ahead and a finally make use of those bags of spawn i was sent. I made the outdoor patches near an old oak tree out in our woods. Morels can stand a little bit of filtered sunlight, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Also, the location underneath the old oak makes the patch much easier to find.

I made the patch according to the directions, which were to spread the sawdust spawn I was sent (see this post) on a well cleared patch of soil, and cover with more sawdust, plus a mix of sand and pea gravel. As a crazy unrelated side note, I LOVE pea-gravel! I like holding a handful and shaking it in my palms. It makes a very satisfying slightly crunchy, slightly swish-y noise! After that, I covered it with cardboard.

This method confused me a bit, because I thought morels didn’t grow on wood? So why the sawdust?

I really hope this works and I get some mushrooms out of it. Morels are highly sought after everywhere, especially places like here where they don’t grow in the wild. I’m really crossing my fingers on this one. This could do wonders for my self-esteem! Unfortunately, won’t know for sure until at least the spring.

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Ground scratched bare of vegetation and litter, so the spawn can make contact with the soil

The spawn, spread on the ground

The finished, watered down pile. Yes, I can’t see it either. It’s a cellphone, guys…

Putting Up Cross Fencing

So the past few weeks we’ve been working on cross-fencing the property. With several hundred broiler chickens running around, good fencing becomes very crucial to keep out the multitude of foxes, coyotes, dogs, possums, and possibly swamp monsters (you can never completely rule out swamp monsters….anywhere!).

Sadly, when we purchased the farm, there was no real cross fencing of any kind, and what little fencing there was got royally owned by Hurricane Katrina. We use, currently, rolls of eletrified poultry netting (which is a really good product, btw) to protect  our birds, but it’s turned into a ridiculously labor  intensive process. The rolls of netting make a rather small foraging area for the birds, and since we keep them in movable pens, the netting must be moved ALOT, as the pens move.

Permanent fence is much better.

So, through the NCRS’s EQUIP conservation program, which gives grants for certain types of conservation/agricultural development projects, we will be able to cross pretty much the entire property into 4 or 5 paddocks. Much of the land is forested, so we had to do quite a job of work clearing the fence lines.

So that’s what my pa and I have been up to, here’s some of our progress.

We rented an auger for the tractor. With the ground as hard as it is right now this was a must. Even with this I ended up having to stand on top on the gear box and hop up and down a little to get the auger to “bite”. Doing that, btw, is an excellent way to kill/maim yourself. It also looks silly.

Finished product with the auger.

Partial view of the first north-south fenceline

Gate by the pond on the north-south fenceline. There will be an east-west line coming right off the other side of this gate.

So that’s it for now, later this week we will be pulling the wire!  The wire will be a 4ft field fence, with two strands of barbed wire on top, and offset electrified wire along the bottom. Excited!

 

 

 

Magnolia Murder

I sell free range chicken and mushrooms.

To be a little more specific, I sell free range chicken and mushrooms under a magnolia tree.  At the farmer’s market in Covington, La to be exact.

It’s a small magnolia tree, but a tree nonetheless. I used to sell under a healthy, vibrant magnolia tree. Nowadays, because of some maniacal tree trimmer with a license to kill from the City of Covington; I sell under a mangled magnolia tree.

Here is the photographic evidence I took last weekend, and just noticed on my phone. I wish I had a before picture to show the difference, but I never thought I would need one, since there was no reason to believe, after years of uninhibited growth, that anything would happen to my wounded comrade.

             

 Current mood: Very anti-establishmentarian

Finally some rain!

I honestly can’t remember the last time we have had any rain, and I spent some time thinking about it. We got a little this morning, just enough to wet the ground, really. But I went out to the pasture and noticed it was enough for the ryegrass I planted forever ago to come up. Finally!

Morel Patch

I recently received a couple of bags of morel spawn from a great mushroom supply company that I frequently purchase from/beg for advice. They have always been very helpful and I was gratified when I was offered a kit of morel spawn for an outdoor patch using instructions for a method they had recently developed. Apparently it has worked well where they are located and they are looking for mushroom farmers in different climates to see how it works for them. As you probably know, morels are not widely grown commercially because there is no accepted method for cultivation that is not patented. For a long time cultivation was considered more of less impossible. So i’m really excited to get this patch started!

Ringless Honey Mushrooms

I’ve been on a mushroom kick lately, as you can tell by the last couple of posts. By “lately”, I really mean the past year and a half. Perhaps a better way of putting it is “I’ve been on an extended mushroom kick”.

You know how when something is brought to your attention you start seeing it everywhere? That’s more or less what it’s been like with my mushroom obsession. I see mushrooms everywhere now, even when I’m not looking for them. I’m pretty much a total newbie when it comes to identifying wild anything, and wild mushrooms are no exception, but whenever I see one I haven’t seen before I rush to look it up online and see if I can figure out what it is. It’s fun to find something mysterious and unknown, and then put a name to it.

However, I’m consistently plagued by self-doubt, and with the exception of some easily identified mushrooms (puffballs, chanterelles, oysters), I haven’t actually had the balls to eat any of the mushrooms I’ve found that I determine to belong to the (depressingly small percentage in my experience) list of “this one won’t make you gag, get sick, or kill you.”

All this brings me to a phenomenon that occurred over the past week- which was the sudden and ubiquitous emergence of these pretty little clusters of yellow/brown mushrooms.

 

EVERYWHERE. Not an exaggeration. Like one every few feet. If I had a mind to, I could probably have filled several garbage bags full. And I’m talkin’ the big 72 gallon bags.

So of course I rushed doubly fast to the computer, a specimen in my lap, and began to scour the small section of the web devoted to figuring out which mushrooms are which. I determined, with like nearly 99% certainty, that my farm was being overtaken by Ringless Honey Mushrooms.

I saw it described at being “technically edible”….Heh, not a ringing endorsement.

But still I thought to myself  ”Aha! I can eat this!”  Of course, I didn’t. Because like the many, many birds I have cavorting around the farm (who, incidentally were not eating any of the mushrooms either),  I was chicken. The part of my brain wired for survival started to think that maybe this mushroom looks EXACTLY like all the ones with the little skull and crossbones icon next to their pictures in the field guides.

 

 

One day I will be brave, bold, and sure of my identifications- but not today. Today, at least I am alive, and am not in the process of having my stomach pumped. Anyway, anyone ever eat one of these?

Making a Home Mushroom Lab

I started writing this post by typing the title “Building a Home Mushroom Lab”, when I instantly realized that “building” is far to glorious a name for what passes for my laboratory.

I actually made my lab over a year ago, and am just getting around to posting about it. But in a way I’m glad I held off writing, because a year was about what I needed to make the little adjustments that made it better.

You may be wondering, “Why do you need a laboratory to grow mushrooms?”   The simple answer is- you don’t. Although hardcore mushroom enthusiasts (yes, such people do exist) might vehemently disagree.

No matter how you slice it, a lab is necessary at some point of the process whenever a mushroom is grown; or if not a lab, at the very least a sterile environment, as mushrooms cultures are mostly started using tissue culture <—handy link to Wikipedia! 

You don’t need to do this part yourself though, as many mushrooms farms and hobbyists buy their mushrooms spawn from labs that specialize in producing it. But if you want to be really cool, and save a bunch of money and headaches (and create another set of expenses and headache inducing problems), you will want to make spawn yourself!

You also don’t need a setup as fancy as the one I’m about to describe- not that a pvc and greenhouse plastic tent is fancy. You can make do with tissue culture, with more frequent failure, with a glove box or even a clean kitchen counter if you so desire.

So how does mushroom tissue culture work?  Paul Stamets is the go-to guy on all this stuff. Usually when you hear the phrase that someone has “written the book” on a certain topic, it’s just a metaphor for them being really knowledgeable. Even if they wrote a book, there are probably several others by just as prolific authors. Pauls Stamets actually wrote the book. Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms is a gigantic tome with all the information you could possibly want on growing mushroom spawn in a sterile environment. It’s really the only book like it. The problem with it is that it’s totally inaccessible. I plowed my way through it as a complete beginner and was totally stumped. So much so that I ended up having to attend his conference (hmmm…intentional?) just to make sense of it all.

In my opinion, this website  does a much more concise job explaining the process that doesn’t leave you feeling overwhelmed- plus you don’t have to pay like 40 bucks for the book and potentially 800 additional for a seminar.

Anyway, enough about other people. If your interested in doing this stuff, check out the link or the book, or both. Here is MY lab:

First off, it’s in my bedroom, which was a HORRIBLE idea because the fan for the laminar flow hood (more on that later) is very loud, and it used to keep me awake until I got used to it. My first night sharing my living space with this messy-looking structure had me lying on my back on my bed, eyes wide open and thinking “What have I done?”

It’s also a horrible idea because my dog sleeps in this room and spreads- I’m sure- all sorts of horrible contaminants around wherever she goes. But it was the only place in the house that had the room. I didn’t have anywhere near the budget for a seperate structure, so a room in the house was necessary. In places where people have basements (Interesting random fact: I don’t think I’ve ever been in a basement in my life), basements  are often used for this purpose. Garages could work too.

I made it out of pvc using 4-way pvc fittings I bought at this site . I had a big roll of 6mil greenhouse plastic left over from another project. I’ve seen a lot of people use a ready made plastic greenhouse from home improvement stores, but I had the plastic on hand and wanted something a little bigger, anyway. I made it 8×8 feet. I made the doorway with a piece of cutout plastic and Velcro for “hinges”. Yeah, the door sucks.

Here are the critical components, if you will:

1. Laminar flow hood

A Laminar Flow Hood is basically just a fan that pushes air through a HEPA filter, that filters out bacteria and mold spores that would otherwise get into mushroom cultures and wreck havoc.

I made this myself  (using plans from a site I Googled but can not find now) by buying a squirrel cage fan and a 24inx24in HEPA filter on Ebay. I got my dad to build a the plywood box for it. We made it so the fan was pulling in air from outside the lab, through the HEPA filter. THIS IS CRITICAL! It creates a positive pressure environment in the lab. So all the little holes and cracks have air being pushed out of them, instead of the other way around. Contaminant laden air (i.e. any air that isn’t run through a HEPA filter) is always pushed out, and can’t seep in.

Here you can see how I built the box housing the fan to be open on the back side to achieve this:

 

2. A Desk or other workspace for the flow hood to sit on

I had an old metal desk laying around from back when people used writing desks instead of computer desks. ‘Nuff said.

3. Copious amounts of tape!

I used greenhouse repair tape, and when I ran out, I used duct tape to tape the sheets of plastic together, and tape the plastic around the floor. You want to make it as tight as possible.

4. Shelves, for holding the bags of spawn.

And that’s about it. I set the whole thing up for under 300 dollars, and the vast majority of that was the cost of the filter for the flow hood. This 8×8 space has been all I’ve needed to make enough spawn to keep my 8×20 foot grow room filled mushroom-producing bags. I get virtually no contamination working in this environment.

My Oyster Mushroom Grow Room

I’ve had several of you ask me about my mushroom grow room, so I thought I’d put some info and pictures on the site, to which I can refer my customers and friends. Including those who are customers and friends!

I had the idea make a grow room out of a shipping container over a year ago, and have actually had it set up for awhile, but have made a ton of modifications to it, especially recently, and I plan on doing more.. It’s been a very bumpy ride trying to get everything right. Mushrooms are very particular about four things- humidity, temperature, lighting, and CO2 concentration, and I’ve had trouble providing the correct amount of each of these things at one time or another.

Of course, all mushroom growing initially begins in a sterile lab, and I’ll post how I made my lab later, because I find this part of the process much more interesting!

The first thing I decided I needed for something made from a shipping container, was a shipping container. I was lucky that a 20-footer had recently gone up in New Orleans on Craigslist for a pretty good price ($800). This what I it looked like-

Getting someone to pick it up in the city and bring it to the farm was actually more difficult that I thought it would be, and the price was such that I’ve successfully blocked it out of my mind completely.

Shipping containers get hot, so I put it under the barn to help keep the sun off of it. It also had lots of holes it it. I patched the holes with fiberglass resin (see picture in slideshow). It  needed painting, so I sanded the rust off (a nightmare task!) and got out dad’s old paint sprayer and a five gallon bucket of enamel paint I bought from Habitat for Humanity for a steal.

A downside to using a shipping container is that the floor is plywood, which, in the humid conditions of a grow room, would breed molds and nastiness. So I needed to seal and waterproof the floor, and the best solution I could find was fiberglass resin. Putting it down was a pain, but I’f been really satisfied with it. It seals the floor all the way to the walls and hardens into an impenetrable barrier. It also let me use the extra resin I had mixed to patch the holes in the side of the container.

Oyster mushrooms need  fresh air, and lots of it. There are formulas to determine what size fan is needed to get the right FAE (fresh air exchange) outlined in Paul Stamet’s book “Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms”. Instead of figuring everything out myself and buying the fans, filters, and housing seperately, I bit the bullet and went with the air exchange and humidity system offered on Paul Stamet’s website for my size grow room. I sort of wish I didn’t, since it cost way more than if I had purchased everything myself, but it was convenient and I didn’t want to take the chance of making any mistakes.

The system came with a blower that I hung outside the back of the container, with a booster fan on the inside, along with an HEPA filter, that filters out mold spores and bacteria from the incoming air (which get in anyway every time I open the freakin door). The air is pushed by the booster fan down the 20 feet of plastic ducting with holes cut in the side. Here’s what it looks like from the inside and out:

The air flow is great, but the line of misters that runs down the middle of the grow room leaves a little to be desired. They are fine mist brass nozzles in a line of half inch PVC, spaced (originally) every two feet. This wasn’t cutting it for me, since I eventually put in a A/C which dried out the air quite a bit, so I doubled that to a mister every foot.

The problem I have with them is threefold- 1. They clog, even with a filter. 2. The water droplet size is too big and 3. Due to the narrowness of the growroom, they get the mushroom bags wet, and hence the mushrooms themselves once they fruit.

Anyway, I originally used small bags to grow the mushrooms in, and placed them on plastic shelves I bought at lowes for like $40 each, which was ridiculous. The mushrooms grow on straw that’s been pasteurized in hot water stuffed into plastic bags mixed with mushroom spawn. I didn’t like using the small bags because it was too hard to get to the back of the shelves to pick (once again a limitation from the 8 foot width)..

I used this system throughout the fall and winter of last year, and it worked great growing Blue Oysters (a cold weather strain) on unsupplemented straw. I was happy. Then warmer weather rolled it.

As soon as the temperatures got around 80 degrees for the high it got stiflingly hot in there. So I did what made sense- when a room is hot you put a window unit in it. I had a little $75 A/C laying around, so I cut a hole in the side of the growroom and caulked it in with silicone.

That worked for a bit, but caused it’s own problems because it would dry the air out that I was so carefully trying to get at 90%ish.

Long story short I caved in and decided to insulate the container, which I should have done from the beginning. Actually, everyone I talked to who knew anything said I ought to insulate it, but I always know better, right?

Craigslist got me a bunch of 6inch warehouse insulation, enough to do the top and sides, for $75. So I framed it in with 2x6s and for siding used some wood I had milled after Katrina from old lobloly pines. The wood was furniture quality, so I felt bad using it in such an uncouth application, but it was free and it looks sweet (see the first pic).

Then I switched from growing in small bags on shelves to large hanging bags from 2x4s I bolted onto the ceiling with eyebolts.

Anyway, check out the pics in the slideshow. I’ll have alot more to say about growing mushrooms in the near future.

Update from the Farm

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. There’s been quite a lot happening, and this sadly neglected blog has been put on the shelf.

The high tunnel tomatoes are rocking and rolling, although I’ve run into more problems than I’d care to reflect on. Worms, aphids, blossom-end rot, severe catfacing from cold weather, etc. We had the coldest and longest lasting winter  since I’ve lived up here, so it wasn’t the best year to put tomatoes in extra-early, but they did survive- perhaps not in the best of shape but I’ve been picking fruit for nearly two weeks now, so life is good. The heirlooms, especially the oxhearts, got hit the hardest, the hybrids didn’t skip a beat.

We ate the first Charantais melon today, by the by, and it was delicious! It was cracked though, everytime I try Charantais melons they end up cracking. Personally I could’t care in the least, since they are still sweet, but it makes them unmarketable, and we can only eat so many. The three muskmelons I’m growing are Charantais, Prescott Fond Blanc (it’s as ugly as sin…in a good way), and Golden Beauty Casaba.

I’ve found a new favorite cucumber, btw- Japanese Long from rareseeds.com…go get yourself some.

Outdoors, bush beans are ready to be picked, although I’m letting the first sowing of beans go to seed. The three varieties I’ve got in the ground thus far are Tavera (a supremely delicious french filet bean), Hutterite Soup (a dry bean which I’ve never tried before), and Dragon’s Tongue. Lettuce is currently bolting, so I’ve got my isolation cages up so I can  save seed from the four different varieties. I seriously overplanted lettuce this year. Winter squash, okra, and  malabar spinach are going in the ground tomorrow.

…and of course, blueberry season is fast approaching! Some of the Southern Highbush are already ripe. I’m looking forward to another 2 months of doing little else besides picking berries all day in the heat!

Chickens are about the same as ever. Right now they’re having the time of their life pecking out ryegrass seed from the stalks in the pasture.

Other than that, the mushroom enterprise is moving along. We built a laminar flow hood, and I made a little clean room out of PVC and leftover plastic from the high tunnel. I got a bunch of test tube cultures, and have been making my own mushroom spawn, so far very successfully. I’ll post later about the specifics of what I’m doing.

Anyhoo…I better wrap this up. Enjoy the pictures in the above slideshow, unfortunately new cell phone camera is not taking very good pictures lately, it seems a bunch of dirt and stuff got in behind the lens.

….And The Results of the Freeze. Plus a Word on Thermometers!

So the Tomatoes fared very well last night. Unfortunately I did not, I’ve been running fever for two days now. The foretasted low outside was 28 degrees F. As you can tell by the picture, the recorded low inside the low tunnel (which was inside the high tunnel) was 35F. I kept a few tomato plants uncovered in the high tunnel just to see what would happen. The result was a mostly dead tomato plants. Some of the inner leaves made it; none of them outright died.

We have a few more cold days coming up. 27 is the lowest forecast, I think on Friday, but these things change so fast.

Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you all pitied me greatly for having to feed chickens and cover and uncover 150 tomato plants while running fever. It really sucked. I have a load of cell flats that are probably in need of watering, but I need to wait for the Dayquil to kick in before I do that. Ahhhhh! Dayquil!

The thermometer/hygrometer in the pic is sweet. 10 bucks on Amazon, and works well, recording both daily high and low. It’s not an outdoor thermometer, but works great in a greenhouse! I want to buy a slew of them and put them everywhere.

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