Mushrooms are blooming!

Community Gardening in Oak Ridge produces fun fungi.

One of our spring 2020 Mushroom Inoculation Station participants sent me this fine shiitake picture on 11/2/2021. He's had a couple large flushes this fall already. My personal logs have given only a few mushrooms this fall and slugs got to mine before I got to them.

Please remember that you should not eat mushrooms that you find in your neighborhood. If you really want to learn more about the fungi in your neighborhood, you might consider using multiple mushroom identification methods as a cross reference. Meanwhile it can help to know an expert who has specialized training.

Here are two online resources that I've used:

Mycokey: http://www.mycokey.com/newMycoKeySite/MycoKeyIdentQuick.html

and a Danish website that uses artificial intelligence: https://svampe.databasen.org/imagevision

I've included an image of a shiitake spore print that one of our participants produced. If you are a creative person, mushroom spore prints can be quite exciting on display to spark conversation in your home or office. I can imagine art inspired by spore prints.

Finally, we are planning to inoculate shiitake logs again at the Grow Oak Ridge Winter Farmers' Market at St. Mary's Church gym. Our target date is Saturday, March 5, 2022. If you participated in 2020, you will receive an email invitation to this event. But you can also find out more by signing up for our weekly email (respond to the popup form you saw on this website).

Please consider supporting Grow Oak Ridge financially. This is a 501C(3) nonprofit organization, bringing community garden initiatives like the Mushroom Inoculation Station, nutrition incentive programs (SNAP/Double Up Food Bucks) and free educational children’s programs to the community through its Winter Farmers’ Market and Market-To-Go.