The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Low tech mushroom cultivation

As Mark mentioned last week, our favorite part of the Organic Growers School was the two talks we attended led by Tradd Cotter of Mushroom Mountain.  Even though Tradd runs a big operation, supplying spawn both retail and wholesale and testing out fascinating fungal partnerships in the lab, he really understands what the little guy is looking for --- simple, low tech techniques we can use to grow mushrooms in our backyard.

For example, while most people will tell you to carefully drill holes, pound in your plug spawn, and paint over the holes with beeswax, Tradd says that you'll get nearly as good results in much less time by cutting two inch deep gashes in logs with your chainsaw, pushing in (cheaper) grain or sawdust spawn with your hands, and then waxing over the holes.  Everyone else tells you to inoculate your logs in late winter, but Tradd says if you've got freshly cut wood, go ahead and throw spawn in it --- you won't get quite as good survival rates, but why waste the wood?

This week's lunchtime series pulls together the most relevant information from Tradd's talks, but I highly recommend that you visit his website to download more in-depth mushroom cultivation handouts, to watch his tight and entertaining mushroom videos, to buy spawn specialized for the southeast, or to sign up for his mushroom cultivation workshops (a bargain even at the $150 price.)  I know I sound like a paid advertiser here, but the truth is that Mark and I both fell in love with Tradd's passion, knowledge, and independence, and have decided he's our new fungal guru.

Sick of the cubicle?  Break free with our $2 ebook.



This post is part of our Low Tech Mushroom Cultivation lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries:





Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.






profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.