Nevada City’s MushBarn produced 15,000 pounds of medicinal and nutritional mushrooms to local individuals and restaurants within its first year of operations.
Mushrooms take longer to fruit amid winter’s cooler temperatures. This barn, however, bears the fruit of knowledge, in the form of a Regenerative Workshop Series that began this past Saturday with a focus on Garden Giants.
Operations Manager Dylan Lynch estimated the MushBarn produced 400 pounds of mushrooms a week since April, when the business began operating at full capacity. From December 2019 until April, the barn produced 200 pounds of mushrooms a week. With the substrate recipe perfected, along with the inoculation process, mycologist Stephanie Manara said she was eager to integrate the knowledge within her community.
Submitted by Stephanie Manara
“We’ve been cultivating mushrooms here for about 15 months now,” Manara said, but “COVID-19 kind of set back the speed of getting the events here going.”
“The regenerative workshop series is focused on sustainable cultivation of mushrooms in an outdoor or natural setting to regenerate soil,” Communications Manager Elizabeth Leece said. “It’s about how we can create healthy landscapes and provide food for ourselves as well as our community.”
Nevada County residents can find Turkey Tail and Witch’s Ear growing along the Purdon Trail once the wet season begins each fall, but now locals can co-steward mycelic-growth given the right shade, moisture content and substrate.
Attendees of the event left with a pot of yellow straw, woodchips, cardboard and inoculated substrate to disperse in their gardens or fruit in the pot.
‘A WHOLE MEDIUM’
Stropharla rugoso-annuata, or Garden Giants, are an ideal mycelium body for the soil’s nutrients — not only for cannabis plants, but fruits and vegetables, Leece said.
Ninety-five percent of plants use symbiosis through mycorrhizae, the nutrient-absorbing organ — or root — of Red Giants. In general, mycelia increases the surface area of roots for nutrient uptake and help unlock phosphorus and nitrogen from organic matter.
“People who add fertilizers — that’s great — but adding mycelia can do the work for you,” Leece said, referring to increased nutrient-uptake facilitated by living fungal mediums.
Mushrooms sequester carbon, deliver water to plants, suppress root pathogens, break up soil compaction and improve aeration.
Lynch said his first attempt at growing mushrooms began with a shiitake log — “a missing part of everyone’s garden.” Lynch said the goal of the series is to provide simple, low-tech ways to grow mycelia at home without a sterilization room or expensive air vents.
Submitted by Stephanie Manara
Manara said she is interested not only learning more about mushrooms, but considers collaboration and knowledge-sharing an actual embodiment of mycelia.
“We can work with mycelium for food and all the practical applications but also (the barn is) a place to get connected to speak the language of the mycelium,” Manara said. “There’s definitely a subtlety to it. Mycelium is a whole medium — like air or water.”
Pheromones fungi release are similar to those humans produce, Manara said.
“We are actually more closely related to fungi than plants,” Leece said.
Rebecca O’Neil is a staff writer with The Union. She can be reached at roneil@theunion.com
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Providing food: Regenerative series focuses on mushrooms, 'fruits of knowledge' - The Union
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