May 11th: Lane Community College Mushroom Installation Workshop, Students Only
May 18th: Lane Community College Mushroom Installation Workshop, Students Only
May 20th: Mushroom Gardening Workshop, Lane CC, Eugene Or, Public, Info Here
May 26-27th: Mushroom Cultivation Workshop, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wa, Public CANCELLED
June 1st: Edible Forest Gardening with Mushrooms, and other workshops, Village Building Convergence, Portland Or, Public
Hello friends, fellow mycophiles, and fungal enthusiasts! The Mycelial Network Collective is excited to officially announce plans for the 2nd ever Radical Mycology Convergence (RMC) and we want you to come! If you haven´t heard of the RMC before, you can read about first one (in 2011) at the link at the bottom of this email. Following up on the success of last year´s RMC we have hopes to expand the event this year to include even more events and we want you to participate!
Some interesting pics of fungi that I encountered on a recent trip to Eastern Oregon. The areas I visited were heavy in Ponerosa Pine and Madrone, much different than the Doug Fir and Hemlock of the Willamette Valley, so I was excited to be in foreign territory. There was still deep snow above 3,500 feet, so I made it almost to Sisters before getting into good hiking grounds. The area around Black Butte gave way to some interesting finds, more Earth Stars than I’ve ever seen before, and an abundant amount of White Cheese Polypore, an interestingly fragile mushroom that I’ve not seen too many times otherwise. There were also many Birds Nest fungi, and an assortment of Pezizas and Auricularias, take a look!
On Sunday (4/15) on my way back to Eugene I took an afternoon detour and went for a beautiful hike to Blue Pool. Along the way I was met with beautiful sights, fabulous fungi, and some friendly folks I’ve not seen in ages, couldn’t have picked a better stop. One of the great finds of the hike was an early spring fruiting of Chicken of the Woods, and since I make it a habit to keep what I call a Field Culturing kit with me, I was able to take some sample cultures which have started to grow and show promise! Look forward to this strain being available in my workshops, and dowel form for sale later down the road…
Tyromyces spp.
An old fallen White Cheese Polypore
beautiful...
Pachyella clypeata
New Culture of Laetiporus sulphureus
Chicken of the Woods
Clues: I found it on April 11th, in Oregon, under Pines, looking for something that I didn’t find. First one to tell me to the SPECIES gets $20 off a workshop of their choice! Go!
So my friends Shay, Hannah, and I went out on a medicinal mushroom harvest on Monday and found this flamboyant fungus, I know what it is, but I’m quizzing you to tell me what you think. Clues: It is upside down in the picture, it grew on a downed log, it has white/yellow spores, and it’s species name does NOT start with “f”. GO!
It looks like some of the H. ulmarius strain that I like to use for breaking down toxins has escaped and is having a go at the cedar workbench that I use in the greenhouse. I’m tempted to let this colony take and see how it grows on the cedar, but alas, spring has sprung here in Eugene and i need the bench too!
This is a little project that I started at the bike shop that I manage in Eugene. Its a simple goal: bike shops make a LOT of toxic waste with all of the petroleum greases, chemical solvents, and other random fluids applied to bicycles. Usually these end up on the bench tops and towels and either get thrown away or are washed into the waste-water stream. It is a situation that’s had me irked for years, here we are keeping folks “green” by keeping their bikes on the road, but many a mess is made to provide for that.
So, first step, deal with these troublemakers:
With the benchtop my approach was to cut up a corrugated cardboard bike box and cover the workspace. I nailed it down to the wood bench so that the grease and solvents would be absorbed into it. The cardboard is an excellent snack for the lignin munchin fungi that I will use to break everything down. This is the bench after abut 4 weeks:
Dirty Bench 1
Wheel bench, and yes, a window!
It’s time for a change-up, so my first step is to remove the cardboard and then roll it up. Next I cut them in half and put them in a re-used styrofoam cooler that has a nice fitting lid. I use re-used zip-ties to hold the rolls together and will remove them later.
Bench Rollup
Packed in nice
Once the rolls are neatly packed in there I poured in about a half gallon of warm water. This is vital for the fungi to take the cardboard on as a new home. After about an hour of soaking in the water I stood the rolls upright and packed in between the layers the innoculum of Hypsizygus ulmarius ( aka the White Elm). This is a strain of this species that I have personally developed away from a gourmet stock strain. By generating genetic diversity and applying petroleum products in the new substrates I was able to select a strain that had a diet for petrol products. I didn’t discover their ability to do this myself, it was the work of Paul Stamets that led me to this realization.
in with the H20
Spawn jar and high-tech transfer equipment
So my first update is in, it’s a week later and the mycelium has regrouped and grown in and out of the rolls. The H. ulmarius strain used here is very aggressive, and usually is difficult to keep from fruiting, so keeping the lid on all but to check in on it once a week keeps the CO2 production high and fruitings scarce. I will post updates here periodically. I’m planning to have it digest some of the dirty rags as well and then after a few months I will have what is left tested for toxicity. Hit me with ideas and questions please!
Fungi runnin free
Its been two weeks actually, but it’s still really relevant material. So at the end of August there was a gathering of amateur mycologist outside of the town of Concrete, Wa where we shared stories, techniques, songs, and enthusiasm for progressive mycological projects. It was organized by a great crew of radical folks from the Olympia area and beyond, which gave the atmosphere an excellent approachable, relaxed DIY feel that I really appreciated.
Folks came from as far as Equador, southern Mexico, and Colorado to present on projects ranging from crude oil clean-up work in the Amazon to mushroom medicine to low-tech culturing approaches. I foolishly didn’t take any pictures! Hopefully I can gather some together from other folks and share some here, it was awesome nonetheless and created a network of motivated fungifolk.
I was lucky enough to have the honor of hosting a workshop on a low-tech spawn transfer technique that I’ve been using successfully for a while, so thanks to anyone who attended and is reading this!
Check out the blog radicalmycology.wordpress.com for more
