Garden Centre

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Mushrooms in the garden

A 40 year old woman has died after eating poisonous wild mushrooms picked from a botanic garden in the Isle of Wight. Another woman is seriously ill in hospital. They are believed to have tasted the fungi, which has been tentatively identified as the death cap, on Monday after the younger woman had collected them during a visit to Ventnor Botanical Garden the previous day.

This tragedy follows fast on the consumption of highly toxic mushrooms by the author Nicholas Evans (the Horse Whisperer) and his family. And it happens at a time when many of us are finding lots of mushrooms – or fungi as we should properly call them – in our lawns and borders. So we can safely bet that the next couple of years will be great for growing our own mushrooms, but please, invest in a kit via mail order, don’t take risks with wild spore!

You need:

• Mushroom growing kit
• Well-rotted compost or preferably, horse manure
• A bucket, trough or other container

Just spread the sterilised grain (which is coated with mushroom spores) over the compost and you're away. It can take up to a year to see any results, although with the current weather conditions, most people seeding a mushroom bed now can expect a spring harvest as long as they water their container well afterwards and keep it in a garage or a sheltered spot outdoors, moving it into the warmth in winter.

Most people will get two to three 'flushes' of mushrooms - producing up to a couple of pounds of mushrooms each time before the food supply in the compost is exhausted.

Labels: autumn tasks, garden mushrooms

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:06 AM

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