By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Staff
With the weather warming up and people eager to learn more about growing their own food, Dover Town Library decided to take a unique approach and invite Kate Donovan from Blackstone Valley Veggie Gardens to teach people how to start and grow their own mushrooms.
Mushrooms sounds scary initially you always hear the tale of a poison mushroom, but Donovan brought grain spawn of blue and pink oyster mushrooms which are a great food source and grow in cool colors that look cool and taste good too.
The first step was to sanitize the containers with alcohol to prepare for the mushrooms. Everyone gloved up and cleaned their containers to get ready. The patrons picked from either the blue or pink mushroom spawn, some of which were already spawning their own mycelium which means they are healthy and actively colonizing the grain. Perfect time to get going.
On each table were buckets of wet hay to create a moist environment they would thrive in and have space to grow. Donovan instructed everyone to put down a layer of hay, pack it down, and then put in a layer of the spawn (but don’t forget to break up the clusters). Then repeat this step until the container is full and spray the top with water to make sure its damp enough the mushrooms can thrive. Then cap it off, and you’re done.
There are holes pre-cut in the sides of the containers so once they need more moisture, they can be dipped into a bowl to water it. Donovan advised keeping it at room temperature but because it’s a mushroom, they don’t need sunlight.
Once they grow out caps and they flatten out with stretch marks, that’s the perfect time to harvest them.
This unique growing of a food source gave everyone a new outlook on the plants they keep in their home, with one woman mentioning she would keep it next to her basil.
With oyster mushrooms being a meaty, versatile ingredient for cooking, this workshop gave everyone something great to try in their kitchen one day.
