Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.

Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.

Welcome! We hope that you enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! Support local journalism — join now!

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! Support local journalism — join now!

Thank you for signing in! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Thank you for using HudsonValley360! We hope that you continue to enjoy our complimentary HudsonValley360 content.

Checking back? Since you viewed this item previously you can read it again. To enjoy all our content, join now!

Log in or sign up for a new account and join now to continue reading.

Join now to continue reading.

Your current subscription does not provide access to this content.

Sorry, no promotional deals were found matching that code.

Promotional Rates were found for your code.

Mostly clear. Low 36F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Mostly clear. Low 36F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Contributed photoShiitake logs continue to produce for as long as five years and, unlike vegetables, don’t require any weeding or maintenance, making these mushrooms a leisurely crop to grow.

Contributed photoShiitake logs continue to produce for as long as five years and, unlike vegetables, don’t require any weeding or maintenance, making these mushrooms a leisurely crop to grow.

I have, I realized during a recent conversation with Willie Crosby, been ignoring a whole kingdom of beneficial and beautiful organisms in my gardening. Willie is the proprietor of Fungi Ally, a mushroom growers’ supply business based in the town of Montague in Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley.

Willie doesn’t just sell kits and spawn (the mushroom starter with which you inoculate your logs, woodchips or other growing media). Fungi Ally’s motto is “Connecting People With The World of Fungi,” and Willie is a dedicated mushroom evangelist; he offers courses online and in person focusing on the growing of all sorts of mushrooms, as well as their culinary and medicinal benefits. He’ll teach you not only why to grow mushrooms, but also all the techniques you need for bringing them from spawn to harvest.

Talking to Willie, I learned, first of all, that fungi are not plants, as I had always assumed. Instead, they make up a separate category of wildlife that genetic studies have proven are more closely related to animals. According to some authorities, said Willie, that may be one reason why so many mushrooms have medicinal benefits; fungi and humans contend with many of the same kinds of pathogens.

Willie also alerted me to the truly impressive diversity of fungi. There are, he said, an estimated two to eight million species worldwide. Not all of these produce mushrooms. Indeed, some of the most ecologically important fungi are the mycorrhizal fungi that live symbiotically (in a mutually beneficial partnership) with the roots of plants. These mycorrhizal fungi are incredibly common in a healthy soil. The soil covered by a single woodland footstep, Willie said, may contain as much of 300 miles of these thread-like fungal “mycelia.” By linking with plant roots, these fungal networks help them collect nutrients and water from the soil; the fungi, for their part, absorb and digest some of the carbohydrates that the plants make through photosynthesis.

Another essential ecological service that fungi provide is their ability to digest and help decompose organic materials such as wood from fallen branches or dead trees.

This explains why the edible and medicinal mushrooms that are Fungi Ally’s stock in trade are so easy to provide with growing media. The shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn is inserted into hardwood logs, for example, while the huge and delectable winecap mushrooms can be grown in heaps of hardwood chips.

Indeed, growing winecaps — also called the “garden giant” because individual caps may measure a foot across — is a good way to prepare a bed for planting. Over their roughly two-year lifespan, the winecaps will break the wood chips down into organic matter attractive to worms, who, in turn, digest it and excrete it as worm castings, which are ideal nutritional matter for plants. Alternatively, you can add fresh woodchips to the pile to renew the winecap production.

Willie had long wanted his own farm and was working for vegetable growers when he discovered the more leisurely cultivation of mushrooms. Initially attracted to shiitake, Willie inoculated 500 logs with plugs of spawn, stacked them in a shady spot and waited twelve to eighteen months for the fruiting bodies to appear. During the waiting period, there was no need for the weeding and constant maintenance that vegetables required. This, combined with the fact that mushroom growing didn’t require much acreage, or a tractor, and that the shiitake logs continued to produce for as long as five years, persuaded Willie that fungus cultivation was his type of farming. Mushroom growing is also great for home gardeners, Willie added, because it provides a use for shady spots that don’t have enough sunlight to support other types of food crops.

To contact Fungi Ally and find out about their educational classes, visit fungially.com. Willie Crosby also teaches classes at Berkshire Botanical Garden. His classes fill fast—including one on Sept. 27, which is already fully registered. To know when future classes are happening, visit berkshirebotanical.org and subscribe to BBG’s weekly e-news or follow them on Facebook or Instagram. To listen to the rest of my conversation with Willie Crosby, go to the Growing Greener podcast at thomaschristophergardens.com

Be-a-Better-Gardener is a community service of Berkshire Botanical Garden, located in Stockbridge, Mass. Its mission, to provide knowledge of gardening and the environment through a diverse range of classes and programs, informs and inspires thousands of students and visitors each year. Thomas Christopher is a volunteer at Berkshire Botanical Garden and is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books.

Your comment has been submitted.

There was a problem reporting this.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.

Columbia-Greene Media has recently teamed up with the US Postal Service to provide same-day delivery of your local newspaper with your mail. Our expanded daily delivery of your local news reaches into the following areas:  

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.