(COSTA) Growing mushrooms can sound like a mysterious business...
They lurk in the damp undergrowth and seem to pop up as if by magic...
Nick and Kirsten know all the secrets.
Now something tells me that these logs have a purpose being stacked like this?
(NICK)They're oak logs that have been inoculated with shiitake spawn...
(KIRSTEN) Shiitake are a great mushroom to grow on logs because
they will grow on pretty much any hardwood
and over here we've got some wood ear mushrooms growing on elder logs.
Now, we like mushrooms so much
we've got some ways of growing them that
give us a harvest all year round... if you want to come up to the house and we'll show you?
Yeah, definitely.
So what... you're somehow... replicating this up here?
Yeah. Yeah, kinda.
So over here we've got a whole bunch of oyster mushrooms growing in buckets.
Wow!
That is amazing. It just doesn't look real.
Yeah, it's magical stuff.
We grow oysters in this grow room all year round.
They're quite tolerant of a bit of heat and a bit of cold.
Most of the time mushrooms are grown on... on disposable plastic bags.
We just get these buckets at local cafes...
And you can just keep reusing them?
Over and over and over again.
Yep
Now this structure itself to me... that, that looks like an old shower door?
Um...
How's this put together?
Yeah, this is just junk that we've got from the local tip shop...
But if you don't have the space for this sort of setup
or you're just starting out,
we started off growing mushrooms in our bathroom, you know a little greenhouse that we would you know
Mist with water to keep the humidity up too.
A lot of people have a backyard pond with maybe some tree ferns or something
um, that can create a humid enough environment to fruit your buckets there.
So, we might take you round the other side and show you how to make these?
Yeah, awesome. Yep.
There we go... all right...
Come with us!
I love the idea of re-purposing old food-grade buckets.
Nick and Kirsten have already sterilized them and got them ready.
And what we've done is we've drilled some holes in them
and then we've covered those holes in surgical tape to allow the mycelium inside to breathe
Our first step today is preparing the substrate.
We're using straw and blocks of sawdust that we need to mix together,
along with a few other kick-starters.
Then add some water and mix it all together
Roll your sleeves up Costa get in.
Here we go.
(indistinct chatting) Is there any technique? Or just...
We just want to make sure all the blocks are wet.
Do they break? Oh, yeah, they break up.
Yeah.
Next, mix the substrate into a bag.
This is a special brewers bag that we're using
but you can just use a pillowcase or any sort of bag that you've got at this stage.
So what we're doing here is we're pasteurizing the straw and sawdust
by keeping it between
60 and 80 degrees Celsius for over an hour.
The hot water will kill off microorganisms and give our mycelium (or spawn) a chance to thrive.
And we can just close the lid
and an hour later all that substrate will be pasteurized and ready to go.
We're also cleaning our workbench with an alcohol mix.
This has drained for about half an hour, so it's not dripping anymore
and now we're going to tip it out on the table and inoculate it.
So now that the substrate is at the right temperature we can add the spawn
We just crumble it out and break it up as we go...
Interesting color in there.
So this is all fluffy with the mycelium of the summer white oyster mushroom.
When you're foraging mushrooms
you have to be super careful about what you're picking.
But that's one of the great things about growing them yourself this way,
the spawn that you buy is going to determine exactly
what species of mushroom you're going to grow, so there's no confusion.
Now we're just gonna mix this in really, really well
and distribute the spawn equally.
So we're just gonna get as much of this stuff into the buckets as we can.
So you have to compact it?
Yeah, the more we get in here, ah, the more mushrooms we get!
Ah
Yeah
Ah well that sounds like good motivation.
(laughs)
It will sit at room temperature, or about 23 to 25 degrees
for 2 - 4 weeks, until it looks like it's ready to fruit.
Here's one that we did a few weeks back.
Wow!
So the mycelium has fully colonized the straw and the sawdust.
This is the point when it's ready to start to produce the mushrooms and
we can trigger that by moving it into our super-humid environment,
you know, in our case, our fruiting chamber.
And once they're in that humid environment the mushrooms will fruit out of these holes,
they'll push past the surgical tape and they'll fruit out from there.
Watching any plant bloom or fruit is beautiful, but
mushrooms are just so special.
Yeah, they're kind of alien and we love that.
Yeah.
(chuckles)
This property is incredibly productive for its size
and it goes to show that you don't need a whole lot of space to grow your own food.
And when it comes to food miles, it doesn't get much closer than your own backyard.