Whatcom Mycological Response Team

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Comment by Harper Stone on April 17, 2011 at 9:49am

Before this article I wasn't aware that mushrooms can eat radiation, and that people can then eat those mushrooms. Check it out! 6 Ways Nature Cleans Up Our Messes Better than We Do  

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 29, 2011 at 9:16pm

http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/7316_0/fungi-/the-nuclea...           Radioactive remediation strategies

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 28, 2011 at 12:08pm

Half the site says your in, but the invite friends part said no. We might need to get David involved to sus it out.

Comment by Charles Kelm on March 28, 2011 at 11:55am

Sorry all - this is off-topic and for J.C. only. J.C. - I followed your link here, but it says that I am a member already.  I haven't received an update, except for your invitations, since January 31st.  Not sure what to do. January 10th was the last time which I got an email saying that someone made a comment on this page.  Maybe because Jan 10th was my birthday. That's the only thing special about that date for me, ha ha.

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 23, 2011 at 9:55am

 

Juliet, When I do the fermentation method, I put the substrate into a mesh basket and submerge it using weight to keep it under water. i.e. anaerobic. All the liquid becomes fermented in one and a half to two weeks. I now remove the basket of chips ( with a little help from my friends ) and just let the chips get exposed to air for one hour. i.e. aerobic. Then the grain spawn gets added, mixed, and bagged. One last tidbit. A little mold is not a concern in remediation. If you try this method let me know how it goes. Good luck. J.C.

Comment by Juliet Thompson on March 23, 2011 at 12:05am

Thanks for your comment JC, I think I'm getting it - top fermentation, just like an ale, eh?  So the yeast feed the fermentation process, eating the sugars, producing alcohol as a waste product, and in the process killing off other bacteria. But the anaerobic conditions farther down in the container kill off many of the bacteria and molds that compete with our favored fungi strains, so between the alcohol on top and the anaerobic conditions down below, we can help to create a reasonable growing environment for the friendly fungi. Am I getting the chip fermentation process now?

Comment by Juliet Thompson on March 22, 2011 at 11:53pm

Hi there,

We're doing part II of Mushroom Workshop at Inspiration Farm this Saturday, March 26th - but we cut down the time from 3 until 5 pm. I know it's a stretch for some of you to come a long distance for a short workshop - but if you also want to learn a bit about grafting - we'll be working on grafting from one pm until three pm. If you're new to grafting this workshop may not be recommended for hands on participation - it may be more of an opportunity to see how it's done. As usual, none of us claim expert status, we are just people who have learned a bit and who want to help each other out. The rootstock and scions were bought, so there will be some cost associated with the grafting. We hope to send you home with some mycelium, but there will not be a lot of that to spare. 

 

We can continue to arrange grain spawn workshops at anytime, so feel free to ask or offer a time when you'd like to work together on this. The warm spring weather is ideal for growing mycelium.

 

Also -- FYI - we had to re-do the grain masters, the set of jars we did together in Juliet's kitchen molded. We suspect the cheesemaking I've been doing lately has contaminated the kitchen. The second set we did at Chris' came out beautifully. Also the bunker spawn we prepared at the farm appears to be growing really well.

 

Hope to see you Saturday for bunker spawn, grafting or both.

Comment by Heather K on March 17, 2011 at 8:33pm

Radical Mycology Convergence!

September 2nd-5th (labor day weekend). (Save the tentative date!)

Location – Olympia area.

 

Quote: “We are still looking for a location, if you know of a good place, please let us know. We're pretty set that we want the event to take place in Western Washington or Oregon. Since the current core organizers are based in Olympia, it would be great if we found a place close by. We would like a place that is surrounded by forest, with access to good mushroom hunting. There needs to be options for both camping and comfortable, indoor sleeping arrangements for people of all abilities. A big, open room for tabling and big presentations is also a priority. We are hoping for a donated, or very inexpensive space.

 

In our last meeting, we had some great discussions about what we'd like the event to be like. We want the space to be welcoming and accomodating to all kinds mushroom nerds. There is a very strong interest in making it as action-oriented as possible. We want to have lots of hands-on activities and a mycorestoration project that we can work on together. We want lots of fun stuff for kids.

Don't forget to check www.radicalmycology.wordpress.com for more info and updates “

Comment by J. C. Walker,Jr. on March 12, 2011 at 8:04pm

Hey Juliet, It might be better to separate the wood chip question into two discussions: fermentation and the anaerobic/aerobic window. I believe it was in “Breakfast of Champions” Kurt Vonnegut clued me into yeast eating sugar and pooping out alcohol. ( I don’t think Vonnegut said poop.) I used to brew a little beer from time to time, and found when I kept the yeast at comfortable 70 degrees, they went through the sugar the quickest. A batch would take one and a half months. I never tried brewing a lager which takes longer ( more like a four month time frame) and is done with cooler temperature. The sugar, for our purpose, is leeched from the soaked chips. The yeast comes from the wild, as the 55 gal. food grade barrel is open on top. After a week and a half it was smelling ripe and bubbling. At Fungi Perfecti they showed a person using the large galvanized horse water containers for this process. My brewing experience makes me think this would take a little longer in cooler temps.

For the other discussion I turn to Alan Bates and his brilliant book “The Biochar Solution”. He states that “ In a compost pile , the right conditions allow beneficial organisms = air breathing bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa, and microarthropods = to out compete their rivals. Non beneficial organisms typically grow better in anaerobic ( oxygen starved ) conditions, so the first thing a good farmer like John Adams did was to make sure his pile had plenty of air.” Seeing we are wanting fungi to have the advantage in all of this, the fermented chips are exposed to air for an hour, and thus the window of opportunity to introduce the mycelium to the chips and place the chips into burlap bags. The bags were placed on a pallet and covered with plastic to retain moisture. 30 days later the mycelium had established itself and the bags were ready to be placed. This method was useful to get the number of bags I needed for the sediment runoff project. While the chips were soaking away I would pasteurize other chips and bag them up as well. It came together quite nicely.

Good find on the non sterile technique. I was looking at solar autoclaves a few weeks back thinking of the EDAP, but that will have to be another discussion down the road. Take care JC

 

Comment by Jennifer Kinder on March 3, 2011 at 5:34am

Hello all,

Would anyone here be available as a consultant for a possible future mycoremediation or phytoremediation project?

An organization called the Native American Youth Association here in Portland, OR is considering a project like this for a small site that they would like to use as a learing garden in the future. Currently their property is surrounded by industial equipment yards- so it is likely that toxic constituents will be found in their soil.

Thank you for your reply,

Jennifer Kinder

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