Growing Fungi

Fungi are amazing.  They are neither plants nor animals.  But the are VERY important to plants and animals, including us humans!  Explore fungi and the mushrooms they produce inside PS 48 and in the school garden.  Fungi keep us healthy!  Can you find fungi outside?  Maybe on a tree or in the soil.  Do you eat any fungi?  Yum!  Watch and learn as the PS 48 student gardeners farm mushrooms!

Growing Mushrooms Indoors Exploration

Growing Mushrooms Outdoors

PS 48 students are creating spaces in the garden for growing fungi.  Fungi help enrich the soil to make it healthy for plants to grow.  Plus lots of other reasons!   Thank you Fungi Foundation for donating the mushroom grow kit!

We will explore different ways to grow edible mushrooms outdoors.  

• One way is to take our indoor mushroom grow kits outside to grow in the garden.  

• Another way is to use sawdust spawn to grow in straw as the substrate (material that provides moisture, nutrients, and, energy).

• A third way is to use sawdust spawn to grow mushrooms in compost

• A fourth way is to add mushroom spawn (mycelia) to our vegetable garden beds mixed with straw.   This helps the soil stay moist and adds nutrients for the vegetables to grow!

Taking Indoor Mushroom Grow Kits Outdoors!

Let's watch this video.  We will learn how to grow MORE mushrooms from our indoor mushroom grow kit that already fruited (mycelia that grew into the mushrooms we know and can harvest).  We will learn how to: 

• placing the kit in a shady space in the garden

• bury the whole kit in the garden soil, 

• break up the kit and then to sprinkle into our garden beds with straw and wood mulch

• and more!

Which way should we continue growing mushrooms?  Any other ideas?  It's up to you!  Which way do you think will work best?  It's time to experiment!

Using Sawdust Spawn to Grow Mushrooms in Straw Substrate

Making Our Own Fruiting Blocks to Grow Mushroom Indoors 

We will learn how to make mushroom fruiting blocks inside our classroom!  We will inoculate a growing medium called wood pellets a bag called a fruiting block.  This means mixing mushroom spawn with the growing medium.  Then we will incubate the mushroom spawn, which means allow it to slowly spread and grow throughout all the growing medium.  Finally, after a few weeks and incubating, we will fruit the mushroom blocks.  We will do this by cutting the bags to let the mushrooms breathe and fruit.  They will be ready to grow new mushrooms by releasing spores...unless we harvest the mushrooms first to eat them, just like we do with fruits and vegetables in the garden.  Who's ready?!?!?

Growing Mushrooms on Tree Logs

We can't wait to start growing edible shitake mushrooms at PS 48.  Read the information from our partner, New York Restoration Project, below to prepare for growing mushrooms in the PS 48 Garden!

Look Closely: Where do you see Fungi?

Growing Edible Mushrooms Outdoors on Straw inside Buckets

We will grow mushrooms to eat (yum!) using straw.  The straw is like the "food" that the mushroom uses for energy to grow.  When the mushroom is ready to fruit, the part of the mushroom we eat will emerge from the holes in the sides of the bucket.  

Let's make sure our hands are clean and sanitized for this!  We will use nitrile gloves to prevent contaminiation.

Recycling with Mushrooms!

Did you know that mushroom are an innovative way to recycle materials (like paper, oil, and plastic) that humans produce (make), use, and discard, or no longer need anymore.  They can even help the environment.  They can clean up pollution caused by they different things that we create and do.  

This is called bioremediation.  Bio means "life," and remediation means "to fix" or "to clean up".  It's using living organisms (like superheroes!) to clean up pollution that humans make.  When humans use mushrooms (fungi) for bioremediation we call it mycoremediation.  The mushrooms act like nature's 'cleanup crews' to clean our water, soil, and the air around us that all plants, animals and fungi rely on to survive.

Now let's experiment with mycoremediation by using discarded (no longer needed) paper that we shredded.