by Angie Lavezzo, CFSA Communications Coordinator | Monday, Nov. 1, 2021 –

Pink Oyster Mushrooms in Grow Bag

There are so many great reasons to grow mushrooms for yourself, your family, and your customers that it’s hard to choose just five. Mushrooms are relatively easy to grow. So much so that mushroom farms exist in all 50 states. While you don’t have to become a full-fledged mushroom farm, they can be an excellent addition to diversify your garden crops or farm income.

Growing enough mushrooms to feed your family and extra to sell at a farmers market or to restaurants will take very little of your time. In fact, after the initial setup, mushrooms may end up being your best-yielding crop when you compare the time spent caring for your logs and bags to the amount of food you get in return.

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By Eric Soderholm, Organic Production Coordinator | Apr. 23, 2014 –

Farmer staring at bags stuffed with fresh shiitake mushrooms

This article is part two of shiitake mushroom production. Don’t miss: Choosing & Preparing Logs for Shiitake Mushroom Production

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the (simplified) lifecycle of these choice edibles. Shiitakes, like all mushrooms, produce two spore mating types—the fungal equivalent to sperm and eggs. Once released from the gills of a mature shiitake, spores that find themselves in damp conditions with access to a food supply will germinate and grow to form hyphae. If these developing fibers meet with compatible hyphae of the opposite spore type, they join together to knit the branching fungal mass know as mycelium. (more…)

by Tradd Cotter, Mushroom Mountain

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By Eric Soderholm, Organic Production Coordinator

Shiitakes growing on a log

If you own a woodlot and have considered the possibility of raising shiitake mushrooms on logs, now is an excellent time to take a winter stroll in the woods and along the edges of your fields to assess the possibilities.

The name shiitake comes from Japan, where these mushrooms were traditionally cultivated. Shii is the name of the tree that is often used as the medium to grow them, a relative of our oak and beech trees, while take is Japanese for mushroom.

The first record of this practice dates back to 199 AD. Currently, the majority of shiitakes that are sold in the U.S. come from compressed sawdust production. I believe that raising them in the more traditional fashion yields a superior mushroom that is attractive and has better flavor. It also can provide the opportunity to get some cash flow from your forest land with market prices as high as $16/lb for direct market sales and $9/lb wholesale for fresh log-grown shiitakes. (more…)

by Laura Stewart, Haw River Mushrooms | Monday, Sept. 30, 2019 –

In 2010, when I met my now-husband, Ches, I never dreamed I would be farming, let alone that we would be churning out hundreds of pounds of edible mushrooms each week, three tons a month of spent substrate, and 100 pounds a quarter of mushroom substrate fed vermicompost. It’s been a long and winding road to worms and fungus! The farming methods we use for such intensive production require a lot of labor to control the mushrooms’ access to light, temperature, oxygen, and humidity so that we can provide a yearlong crop. However, as labor intensive as mushroom growing can be in a concentrated agriculture operation, they can be one of the most passive crops possible when grown on logs for outdoor production. This article will share a bit about the many benefits of mushroom cultivation—even if you don’t plan to measure your production by the ton!

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