Photo courtesy of Jack Hay
FANCY FUNGUS: Shiitake mushrooms are easily grown from hardwood logs. With a high demand and a low startup cost, mushroom farming could become a thriving cottage industry in Almaguin and Muskoka.
ALMAGUIN – Firewood, lumber, maple syrup – those are the crops most people think of harvesting from a woodlot, but another cash crop shows promise for the area.
FedNor recently held a forum on mushroom production as a potential cottage industry for Muskoka and Parry Sound districts. Not just any mushrooms, but flavourful shiitake mushrooms that generally sell for about $12 a pound in the city.
“There's quite a demand, and it's pretty easy to do,” said Dr. Jack Hay, who explained that shiitake mushrooms are slower growing and not as suited to mass production as the cheaper white mushrooms.
Hay is a retired immunologist who started mushroom farming as a hobby a few years ago on his 150-acre property on Georgian Bay. All one really needs to start a mushroom farm is a woodlot.
“You don't have to have your own woodlot,” he said. “You just need access to a woodlot.”
What we think of as a mushroom is actually the “fruiting body” of a fungus. That fungus requires organic matter in which to grow. This is provided by small hardwood logs about three feet long.
“They have to be cut from live hardwood trees in winter,” said Hay, noting that oak or ironwood are best.
In the spring, you drill holes in the logs and insert plugs of living fungus called spawn. You lay them down in a shady spot and wait for the fungus to colonize the log. Over the first summer, it will grow throughout the wood, and be ready to produce the following year. At that point, you stand the logs up, keep them moist, and pick a crop of mushrooms about once a month. Depending on the weather, the season can run approximately from April to November.
“It's great because it's all outside,” said Hay, suggesting that mushroom farming can be a family activity.
Hay will have 600 logs producing this year, and he is working on increasing that to 1,000. He delivers the mushrooms shortly after picking, so storage is not required.
Shiitake are sold both fresh and dried. In addition to their flavour, they are also reputed to have some medicinal benefits. Hay is trying to convince some of his colleagues at the University of Toronto to explore those.
Hay currently buys his spawn from a supplier in the Toronto area, but he intends to use some lab equipment he has lying around to produce his own, and cultivate some edible native mushrooms as well. Eventually, he plans to become a supplier for the north. He's also considering teaching a course in mushroom cultivation. So far, one restaurant takes Hay's entire crop, so there is room for more suppliers.
“They're the second most popular mushroom in North America,” said Hay. “They have a long tradition in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China.
Editorial
