Mushroom rafts = Dirty fungi
The good news is that our mushroom
rafts started
producing like crazy once we got a few rains and temperatures dropped
to more autumnal levels. I was surprised to discover mushrooms
even on the logs that didn't fruit last year --- being close to the
earth seems to rejuvenate mushroom logs with even a hint of life left
in them.
The bad news is that the
mushrooms we harvested were pretty filthy. Mushrooms are one of
the few foods that you really can't wash since they'll soak up the wash
water and go soggy. I wiped the shiitakes harvested from our
rafts vigorously with a damp cloth, but there was still quite a bit of
debris left on the caps. Good thing we're not very picky eaters.
Our mushroom totems had
a bit of the same problem since mushrooms tend to pop out in the
dampest portion of the log, which is also the region closest to the
ground, but careful 
plucking seemed to minimize
the dirt. Now that weather is a bit cooler, the oyster mushroom
totems have started fruiting all up and down their length, resulting in
a much cleaner product.
I'm still weighing the
pros and cons of mushroom rafts and totems vs. the more intensive log-soaking
methods we'd used
previously. I don't think I'll repeat our mushroom rafts, but the
totems have a lot of selling points if you can put them in a damp,
shady location.
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.
There is an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats where he busts food myths, and one of them is the one about soaking mushrooms.
He weighs out three sets of mushrooms, keeps one as a control, rinses one quickly in the sink, and soaks the other in a bowl of water.
I don't remember his exact findings, but it turned out that the amount of water soaked up by the mushrooms was negligible.
Just thought you might like to know!
I think that the whole "you can't wash mushrooms" thing is an old wives tale. I know that Alton Brown did an episode of good eats where he measured the water absorbed by mushrooms, transcript is located here.
But either way, I don't like mushrooms. I can't get it through my brain that they are good. I really wish I could, though. I have several areas in the yard that would be good for mushroom logs, and as far as growing stuff, they are not a lot of work.
I am so envious! My shiitake are growing like mad, but I am afraid to eat them since mushrooms containing dangerous levels of Cesium 137 were found in our city (Takahagi, Ibaraki). They weren't shiitake, but rather tawny milkcaps.
I can't find any evidence that shiitake concentrate cesium like the milkcaps, but there have been a few cases of mushrooms over the legal limit in the news....
And soon it is nameko season! (that is my photo in the wikipedia article by the way
) But they grow in mushroom rafts in contact with the soil, so I think that we are better safe than sorry this year.