Episode 018: Magic, Medicinal, and Gourmet Mushrooms

Admittedly, we’re not actually growing any “magic” mushrooms (Psilocybin) on this episode. What we are doing, though, is growing some gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. On the gourmet side of the house, we’re starting some indoor mushroom patches, growing lion’s mane, shiitake, and blue oyster mushrooms in hardwood logs. On the medicinal side of the house, we’re starting a small patch of reishi mushrooms (mushroom of immortality) in a bag of sawdust. This is a process that takes some time, so we’ll follow up at a later date to talk about how the mushrooms are doing and maybe some lessons learned. I promised a bunch of resources in the show notes for this episode, so everything is listed below. If I’ve forgotten anything that I mentioned in the episode, please let me know, and I’ll add it.

Fungi Perfecti is the company that I use for all of my mushroom cultures. www.fungi.com

If you’re totally new to growing mushrooms, my best recommendation is to start with a kit like this indoor shiitake patch.

This is the lion’s mane plug spawn that I used.

This is the shiitake plug spawn that I used.

This is the blue oyster plug spawn that I used.

This is the indoor reishi patch kit that I used.

Additionally, our friends at Fungi Perfecti recommended the following resources for our listeners:

For more information on how mushrooms can help save our honey bees, check out beefriendlyinitiative.org.

Here’s a recent article from the journal Nature on using mushrooms to fight colony collapse.

This is some additional info on the ongoing bee research at Washington State University.

If you’re interested in really learning about using mushrooms for medicine, creating gourmet dishes, and all sorts of other fascinating information in the realm of mycology, this article database from Fungi Perfecti will keep you entertained for days.

If you’re really ready to step up your mushroom knowledge, this reference database is a little more scientific and will answer just about every question you have about every variety of mushroom out there.