It's Growing!

This weekend, I got a chance to check my garden at the cottage. It's been two weeks, so I was excited and also a little nervous to check it out. Instead of tilling the ground like usual, I used sheet mulching to layer compost/cardboard/organic material and planted the seeds on top. This definitely has benefits, but it has a downside that I didn't realize: the raccoons clearly liked something that was underneath the cardboard layers. I assume it was an eggshell or some kind of delicious, rotting vegetable that I used as my base layer. Luckily, the coons didn't totally rip up everything, but they did damage a small piece of it.
But besides that, things are growing! My peas are growing the fastest, but there are the sprouts of carrots, basil, and I think spinach. I know to most people this wouldn't be a big deal, but I was actually really proud that my seeds are doing okay (despite the fact that I planted them in an area teeming with wildlife and abandoned them for two weeks).

My original blue oyster mushrooms at home

Over the weekend, I also transplanted my blue oyster mushrooms outside. A few months ago, I started growing mushrooms in my apartment. It started out in a medium sized jar, as you can see from the photo. However, several months later and a few fruitings later, it was taking over the container. My apartment doesn't have a lot of sun (or space), and I was running out of glass bowls to put it in. I decided that this weekend was time to either kill the mushroom entirely, or transplant it outside. I was kind of emotionally attached to my fungus, as weird as that sounds, so I felt like I should give it more space to live and make more food for me. In March, when it first produced fruit (what you think of when you eat a mushroom), I put some of it in a stew. I didn't die, so I think it's fine to eat them again.

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When I first started growing the mushrooms, I really didn't know what to expect, or when I would know when it's good to eat. This is a cool time-lapse video that I found that shows how blue oyster mushrooms grow. From what I've read, the fruit isn't supposed to be so long and spindely - this indicates that that mushroom needs more oxygen.

I made a holey bucket!

As a wildlife biologist, my main concern was that mushrooms that I released outside would end up taking over other species and become an alien invasive species. First I did some research and asked a few mushroom experts if it was relatively safe for me to put them outside. Blue oyster mushrooms aren't native to this area, but there are a few related species. Apparently one important point is that they feed on dead material (prefrably straw or wood chips), so there's no danger of it attacking a living species.
To grow oyster mushrooms outside, I had to drill holes into a bucket. Then, I layered hay with broken up pieces of mushroom mycellium (the body of the mushroom). I was initially looking for straw, but I had a really hard time finding it in the country, which surprised me. A friend had some hay at their farm, so I was lucky enough to snag some of the leftovers.

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Layers of mycellium and hay in the bucket

It actually took me relatively little time to make a holey bucket and layer it with hay and mycellium. The hardest part was getting the supplies. Once I closed my bucket, I put it in a sunny area (but not full sun). I'm not sure if this is the best location for the mushrooms, but I thought it might be a good place to try it out.

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