I am quite a rooky (yet :)) in the vast kingdom of fungi (as well as blogging), but in the longer run I hope to be able to share bits and pieces of interesting information - and the results of the home made experiments. I aimed to organize information into Pages, but apparently that is not possible, so I will have to figure out something else to keep the blog tidy.
I am currently experimenting with cultivation of exotic mushrooms (mainly lignivore), which i ordered on Ebay or took samples from mushroom bodies bought in markets and shops, like velvet foot mushrooms, pioppinos, oysters, beech and straw mushrooms and co. I use spent coffe ground among others and the whole things is yet on an extremely small scale (like in 250ml jars...), and produce some very-very shy, long necked crop, due to lack of equipment and room. By may I will be moving to my own house with garden and a BIG cellar, who begs to be my lab + growth area, so I hope circumstances (and along with it results) will improve significantly.
During the summer/autumn period I have been collecting various wild mushrooms (i.e ALL that was not fast enough to run away ;) and which I could more or less identify), taken samples from them and built up a small strain collection. One of my personal favourites is the Agaricus augustus from the Anwerp zoo with its mesmerizing smell. (btw I hope it is still revivable - I havent got to pass it onto new medium since months...). If all goes well I will test-cultivate these folks (the non-mycorrhizal ones). Not the mention the glowing ones like Panellus or Omphalotus :D.
I noted also the strong smell of Cantharellus cibarius mycelium in the jars. Although this species produces mushroom bodies only when connected to its tree partner, and so commercial cultivation is not very viable yet, it really tickles me to see if the mycelium itself could be used as a spice or a main course, similarly to tempeh. Tempeh is fermented soybeans "conquered" by a type of mold (and it is delicious i can tell you). Of course production method would be different, but I imagine the end product's look similar to tempeh. I will come back to this point with more details later on.
My lure to mushroom cultivation is not only for food. Miriam Rice's books on mushroom dyeing took irrepairable damage on my course of life last Autumn in the good sense. Though myself was not yet able to produce convincingly strong colours on wool, it is mainly due to my inexperience and the minute amount of mushroom dye that I managed to save in the pre-winter period - and that I waited like 4 months before I used them up from the fridge. But I can hardly wait to lay hands on more mushrooms and as I have some dye goodies in my strain collection, like Hypholoma fasciculare or Hapalopilus rutilans, I have solid plans to produce my own mushrooms for dyeing. (Wish me good luck with it ;)).
Another aspect is the fibers in the fungi. It is possible to produce some very fine papers out of mushrooms, which I already ran some tests withm plan to upload the photos later on. There are also the ingenious Ecovative guys at http://www.mushroompackaging.com/ with their amazing products. They take a carefully selected agricultural waste material, get it run through by mycelium in a mould, disactivate growth of mycelium when run is complete - and there you have your packaging material. It is such a simple and beautiful idea! I am totally in love with it. They even use mushroom as insulation in buildings! Needless to say, that I can hardly wait for the day when these harmless, biodegradable, closed loop products overtake completely the place of styrofoam, etc.
One step further down the road would be to look for molecular building blocks, monomers, that could replace the current fossil dependant, non degrading polymers used in every aspect in our lives - at least in areas where use of these materials are not justified at all (eg. why use one way plastic cup that stays with us for hundreds of years as a minimum, to drink your coffe in 1-5 minutes...). I am also pretty convinced that it would be a better alternative compared to the use of agricultural crops, as would not endanger food resources. One possible candidate is chitosan, a chitin derivative, but I suspect there are more into fungi. I will keep you posted :).
- O, yes, one important point about mushrooms, that is known to wider audiences and was not mentioned so far: their medicial properties. I admit this is an interesting field, but a field laying quite far from my general interest. Nevertheless, I will do my absolute best to keep this subject also on the radar.
And as an absolute fun - and in case of proper amount of free time, I plan to create all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable decorational objects and jewelleries out of Fungi. I already saw some pretty inspirational blogs on this subject, and I hope to be able to unleash my creativity and come up with some pretty (and perhaps even useful and durable...) stuff.
Happy mushrooming for all!
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