Behind the Scenes Pt.2 - Lets Go!
Behind the Scenes at Jurassic Coast Mushrooms:
Pt.2 - Let’s Go!
On The Farm..
What a few weeks it’s been! Both on and off the farm. Firstly, we made a colossal error with a mislabelled bag of spawn which got expanded onto more spawn! Our systems appeared bulletproof but unfortunately two very similar codes got mixed and from there the drama unfolded between our Lionspride and Pink Oyster strain.
We had to recover the situation quickly so looked to expedite some spawn in the incubation room….only to find we’d also had a resident mouse move in and through the night had nibbled a tiny 2-3mm hole in over a dozen of our first generation spawn bags! 😭
We pride ourselves on the quality of our product and service. So we’ve righted our wrongs, evicted the resident mouse and have learnt from our mistakes, so it doesn’t happen again.
In other news, we move into our shipping container next month! This will drastically increase our incubation space and general storage. Once insulated and racked out we anticipate enough space to incubate 800 more bags of spawn. Sam’s dad Pete has also been down the farm helping us erect the walk in chiller, another essential piece of the puzzle to enable us to expand.
We’re running the autoclave 3 times a week, producing anything between 230-260kg of mushroom grain spawn per week (at the moment).
Off The Farm..
We regularly run mushroom growing workshops throughout the year and often collaborate with John Rensten at Forage London for events in the New Forest. Our Late season workshop at the end of November was another sell out event, we also had a last minute and some-what surprising attendee in the form of Chris Packham! We covered all the basics of cultivation and then plugged some fresh logs with inoculated dowels, for each person to take their own pet log home.
We covered the numerous types of substrate for both making grain spawn and fruiting substrate then proceeded to make native Oyster mushroom growing kits.
We had just enough time at the end of the session to cover liquid cultures and some easy low-tech methods such as Uncle Ben’s Tek. Each attendee had a go using the pop-up SAB and inoculated their own bag with some native Tarragon Oyster culture
The week prior we were invited by the Fungi Conservation Trust to join them on a televised fungi foray with BBC Devon, you can check out the article here. There’s a BBC Spotlight recording somewhere floating around in the abyss of the internet, I’ll post it up here if I ever find it!
The actual RHS got in touch with little old us..they’re encouraging folk to embrace fungi in the garden, be that edible varieties and general saprophytes to help create diverse healthy soil with a banging structure and nutrient profile. Fungi literally will save us if we work with them.
While it’s great actively encouraging species to grow in your garden, it really needs to be done with consideration. It most certainly should be a native species and where possible a local one at that.
The RHS has gone to the trouble to put a great list of suppliers together (obviously including yours truly) who supply native species of mushroom cultures. We’re up there with the likes of the Caley Bro’s and Fat Fox! 😍
Check it out! - RHS Native Mushrooms
To round off the week we both packed up everything including the kitchen sink and headed off to the Dorset Teams Christmas fair on the Saturday in Wimborne, followed by the RNLI Christmas market on the Sunday in Poole, we had such a great weekend, we sold lots of native mushroom growing kits and lots were wishing us well for the next year ahead. It got us thinking about what events we want to attend next year!
It’s now back to the farm to make more grow kits, harvest some fresh mushrooms ready for the morning’s deliveries and to check up on this week’s mushroom grain spawn shipments for all you lovely mushroom cultivators!
Happy Growing!
Andy & Sam xx