“Nibble on a begonia petal and it will blow your mind, they are so delicious,” Kort raved.

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
October 21, 2011

Excerpt:

Foraging is becoming popular with local young chefs as a way to find unique and truly seasonal ingredients for their diners, Kort said, rattling off the names of a half dozen chefs-slash-friends who like a free meal as much as she does.

Her backyard in East Vancouver is planted with indigenous berries and herbs, from Saskatoon and salmon berries to huckleberries and sorrel.

“Being a chef, I love working with ingredients that you can’t actually buy in the store,” said Kort. “There are 500 different species of mushrooms that are edible in British Columbia at different times of the year and you won’t find them in the store — and even if you did they’d be super-expensive, dry and crappy.”

Lobster mushrooms, cauliflower mushrooms and at least 10 varieties of hedgehog mushroom are easy to find in forests from the North Shore to Manning Park. You can find chanterelles a few feet into the woods off nearly any road on Vancouver Island.

Read the complete article here.

What If a Mushroom Designed Your Kitchen?

By Nick Sowers
Good Magazine
March 15, 2011

Excerpt:

The first proposal is the “Shiitake Cabinet,” a temperature- and humidity-controlled container which inserts into a standard array of cabinets and drawers. The entire unit can be pulled out to load shiitake-inoculated hardwood logs in the rear. One must be patient in growing shiitake mushrooms (six to eight months or more to yield fruiting bodies is typical). So the cabinet can hold several logs which might be at varying stages in the fruiting process, guaranteeing a year-round supply of mushrooms.

The second concept is the “Oyster Pocket Slider,” which is a special pocket door that can be embedded in any wall. Mushrooms enjoy darkness (although some indirect light is good), so the slider should be hidden most of the time. Oyster mushrooms also like to grow out of a combination of straw and compost (you could add coffee grinds to the substrate), kept moist within a perforated plastic enclosure. The sliding door holds the substrate in place and when pulled out, allows for easy harvesting.

Read the complete article here.

A Girl Chopping Collected wild mushroom. Photo by Tika Ram Aryal.

Mushroom poisoning is a great problem in Nepal

Tika Ram Aryal
Department of Science and Environment Education, Tribhuwan University, Prithivi Narayan Campus,
Pokhara, Nepal
E-mail:tikaramaryal2000 (at) yahoo.com

Abstract

Mushroom poisoning is a great problem in Nepal. Every year dozens of people died and hundred of people fall sick due to consumption of poisonous wild mushroom. Local people have been using wild mushroom in their diet as well as a source of income, but they do not have proper scientific knowledge about the identification of edible and poisoning mushrooms. This practice has caused severe poisoning and even death. Here is no any responsible organization to reduce the death of due to consumption of wild mushroom. An effort has been made with the aim to reduce casualty of people due to consumption of wild mushroom through different awareness programmes, training, and brochure distribution at the most vulnerable parts of Nepal which were identified from the published report in various national newspapers in 2008 and 2009.

Introduction

Nepal is a land-lock Himalayan country with natural biodiversity. It has been regarded as “The natural showroom of biodiversity “because of its geographical ecological and climate variation resulting in environmental diversity and gave a unique wealth in the form of various green and non-green vegetation. The different ethnic groups in Nepal possess rich knowledge of local Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) as a cultural heritage; these are listed as food, medicine, and on various socio-religious purposes. In Nepal various mycophagous group such as Serpa, Tamang, Gurung, Magar, Tharu, Danuwer, Newar,Kami, Damai, Sarki ,Chepang, etc. are directly concerned with the collection & consumption of mushroom historically due to mushroom are also locally trade as minor forest product at local market. Out of 110 species edible mushroom, 40 species are sold in local market every season.

Mushroom poisoning problems are not new to Nepal. Every year dozens of people die; hundreds are admitted to Hospital for treatment, while hundreds more rely on local treatments. During the rainy season, poor people (the so-called “lower caste”) rely on wild mushrooms as a much needed food source and also as a flavorful addition to their diet. Although they have vast knowledge about the regional wild mushrooms, sometimes serious accidents occur. Whole families have been wiped out by consuming poisonous wild mushrooms. Many are not afraid of using wild mushrooms despite knowledge of the risks associated with the poisonous effects of some mushrooms. Likewise, many local people are confident that they can recognize poisonous mushrooms even though they may have
witnessed their neighbors dying due to consumption of wild poisonous mushrooms.

Undocumented and unrecorded mushroom poisonings are much more common than the published incidents because so many cases occur in very remote areas. News reporters are unable to reach many victims in remote areas in order to collect information. At the same time, there is vast knowledge about wild mushrooms among local users, and this may be far beyond that of professional mycologists. Therefore, it is of acute importance to document and conserve traditional local knowledge before it is lost permanently.

See the complete paper here. Large download. 6 MB.

Newspaper article in Nepalese about Tika’s work here.

100% sustainable urban mushroom farm

By Sarah Henry
Berkeleyside
Nov 12th, 2010

Excerpt:

There’s so much buzz around the fledgling food business launched last year by two former University of California at Berkeley students, that you’d think they were pumping out premium honey.

BTTR Ventures, run by Hass School of Business grads Nikhil Arora and Alejandro (Alex) Velez, has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and on the BBC.

Launched on Earth Day last year, the company has also won a steady stream of awards for its innovative, socially conscious, green business.

The pair, both 23, were named among America’s most promising social entrepreneurs by Business Week this year and in the top 25 of young entrepreneurs by the same publication last year.

What are they doing? Well, they’re in the mushroom business: using recycling coffee grounds (from Peet’s Coffee & Tea) they produce spore starter kits so people can grow their own oyster mushrooms at home. It’s part of a zero-waste system that diverts 7,000 pounds of coffee grounds a week into a delicious and nutritious food source. Their production process also results in nutrient-dense soil amendment suitable for fruit and vegetable gardens.

Read the complete article here.

Their website “Back to the Roots” here.

Maria Keating, our in-house bug lady, recently took a very inspirational five day mushroom identification course with mycologist Paul Stamets, at HollyHock, an education retreat center on Cortes Island, B.C.  The fall course, now an annual event, was packed with information on the many fungal innovations and products that Paul’s company, Fungi Perfecti, specializes in. Paul’s latest book is titled ‘Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World’.

Link to Paul Stamets’ website, Fungi Perfecti, here.

Link to Hollyhock website here.

Watch a talk by Paul Stamets on the website TED, titled ’6 ways mushrooms can save the world’.
18 minutes long.

Our Maria is not just a Bug Lady, she’s a ‘Mushroom Lady’ as well. Hidden amongst the large squash leaves in the Youth Garden are some wonderful edible mushrooms she started last spring. Maria shows us how she grew her King Stropharia – Garden Giants.

See this piece about Garden Giants. ‘Grow edible mushrooms in your vegetable garden!’ By Carolyn Herriot

Maria’s ‘babies’ have finally arrived in large numbers. Carefully watched and nurtured since April, 2007, these Shiitake mushrooms are ready for harvest. They have grown on oak logs that were culled from Stanley Park after a devastating storm and delivered to us by the Vancouver Park Board. Hard to believe that anyone, that’s us, can grow such wonderful fungi in a city garden.

Photo by Michael Levenston. Link to larger version here.

Thanks to Jim from Vancouver Parks for giving us the Stanley Park oak logs.

Last April, 2007, When the Mushroom Spawn Arrived.

Drilling the Logs for the Shiitake Spawn

Tika Aryal teaches farmers in Nepal how to grow mushrooms to improve their livelihood. His attached report describes his education program.

“In Nepal, mushroom cultivation began in 1976. Nowadays it is a fast growing business due to its high profit. Farmers can get output within one month from ‘pleurotus’ cultivation. Nepal is also a country where mushroom can be cultivated throughout the year under natural environmental conditions.

“We have plenty of raw material for mushroom cultivation. Skilled farmers can earn a lot of money from its cultivation. It is also necessary to develop cultivation technology of this valuable mushroom. Some of the wild mushrooms are poisonous but cultivated mushrooms are safe for consumption. They have high medicinal and nutritional value. Growing them can help solve the malnutrition problem in our country. So from every point of view farmers should be encouraged to cultivate mushrooms.”

Read Tika’s report here. (2.7 MB Word document.)

Email Tika Aryal here: tikaramaryal2000@yahoo.com