So…like, what’s a mushroom anyways? It’s not a plant, it’s not an animal. It’s its own thing, belonging to the kingdom Funga. Mushrooms are actually the fruiting bodies of fungi, which are mostly underground most of the time. Some fungi don’t even grow fruits. In nature they are decomposers, breaking down dead stuff into nutrients for other things and passing along information and energy along their mycelial webs under forest floors. They’re kind of amazing and essential to our existence, in case you didn’t know. Before I got into mushroom growing, I actually didn’t know a dang thing about mushrooms. As far as I knew they were just a thing you find in the produce isle. I would say I was fungi-neutral. It’s come to my attention that some people are actually fungi-phobic and I’d like to help change that view. They can be quite cute and seemingly full of personality. Their variety is endless and endlessly interesting. There are so many uses for them too! I wasn’t sure how I would format this blog because I’m coming at it from many angles at once so I’m doing some posts that are about growing, some that are articles, and others that are just fun mushroom pics and things, recipes (maybe?), and whatever else seems like it should fit here. The following pictures were from my misadventures just getting into growing, when I was still working at my shop full time and didn’t yet have the time nor money to dedicate to it fully. It was a start, and things really took off when I did have time to take a whole month to dive in back in October, but we’ll get to that later.
As my first attempt to grow, I thought I’d try buying a ready to grow lion’s mane kit. Unfortunately, this was right before our freak heat wave and my apartment doesn’t have air conditioning. It dried up and aborted no matter how hard I tried to keep it moist. It was a miserable experience. But it was certainly an experience.
Itty bitty grow space with nothing going on just yet. Stay tuned.
That does it for entry 0 of Tek Check. Next post will probably be something more informative than this embarrassing show and tell of my early lack of knowledge of anything fungi. Can’t wait to share my successes. We grew some cute ones (and some grotesque ones too!).