Tom Gordon - Mushrooms: A Beginners Guide to Cultivating and Using Mushrooms

Introduction

W elcome to the world of mushrooms! This book will provide everything you need to be a prepared steward of cultivating and using mushrooms to the necessity of your own uses. We will cover everything from the health benefits of mushrooms to how to grow them, from the history of mushrooms to the way they are used in modern-day religious ceremonies.

Each of section of the book can be read independently of each other, so feel free to skip around to the information that is most necessary for you.

As a quick summary to help you get started, in Chapter One well discover the importance of using mushrooms to grow and cultivate for your own personal usage. We will discuss the health benefits of mushrooms, how to use mushrooms with care and how to make sure you are handling mushrooms that are not poisonous.

In chapter 2, we will quickly walk through the parts of a mushroom and the life cycle of the mushroom for you to have the most preparation possible for when you decide to grow mushrooms for yourself. It is important to have all the jargon down as you become an experienced mushroom farmer so that when you run into problems (believe me, you'll run into plenty), you will be able to handle them by yourself and research using proper terms when necessary. We will also discuss what a mushroom is.

Next, in chapter 3, well talk about the most popular mushrooms to grow for yourself, including varieties such as Crimini, Maitake, Portobello, Shiitake, White Button, and Oyster. We will talk through the health benefits of each one, the difficulty in growing each, and what materials you need to start growing them.

We will go into the specifics of growing mushrooms, covering subjects such as soiling, watering, fertilizing, pruning, harvesting, and other topics related to these. This will be heavy on the technical talk, so be sure to read chapter 2 before you read this chapter.

In Chapter 4, we walk through how to use mushrooms most effectively, whether that be in the kitchen, for medicine, added health benefits, religious ceremonies, and more. Lastly, chapter 6 will be where we will talk through the mistakes to avoid while working with mushrooms and other important notes.

In Chapter 5, we look briefly at foraging for mushrooms and how to identify them, along with a list of questions you need to ask yourself about every mushroom you find that way, you have a good idea of whether they are safe to eat or not.

In Chapter 6, we will dive in-depth into medicinal mushrooms, discussing what they are, and the physiological effects of the mushrooms. Then we look into the impact on individual systems in the human body, such as the endocrine system, the cardiovascular system, and so on. Well end the chapter by looking at five specific mushrooms and how they can boost your health.

In Chapter 7, we will discuss some of the more common problems you might encounter when cultivating mushrooms, such as not fruiting, spoiling after harvest, and more.

And, as a bonus chapter, I will answer 12 of the most commonly asked questions about growing gourmet mushrooms for profit.

Growing mushrooms is an amazing journey. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 1 - The Story of the Mushroom

N o example of the mushroom's impact on the world around us is quite like the fungi that killed an emperor, which changed the face of Europe entirely. Charles VI was the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, Austria, from the 1st of October 1685 and died on the 20th of October 1740. On the 10th of October, at the age of 55, he was fighting a nasty cold as he was struggling under ruling a harsh political campaign in a time of possible bankruptcy, as this was nature's way of telling him to take some time to rest instead of pushing himself. An old saying was that to beat a cold, he must eat to regain his strength; he decided to have a bit of his favorite meal - mushrooms stewed in Catalan oil. Somehow the deadly Amanita phalloides , also known as the Death Cap Mushroom, ended up in his stew. He survived for ten days but succumbed to his illness eventually.

After his untimely death, Marie Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, had to bear arms to defend her inheritance from the forces of Poland, Saxony, Spain, Prussia, Bavaria, and France. This was known as the Austrian Succession War from 1740 to 1748, and while Maria was able to save her crown, there was still a huge change in Europe. According to some scholars, the instability in Austria seemed to even leak into the War of Jenkin's Ear between the British, Spanish, and the Caribbean, and affected people as far as India; this event affected the Revolutionary War in the Americas. As Voltaire once said: "A dish of mushrooms changed the destiny of Europe."

In the history of food groups, nothing has been so loved and hated at the same time than that of the mushroom. The terms "mycophilia" and "mycophobia" are widely used now to describe these two broad camps of people. Many eastern countries have historically loved the mushroom for its seemingly magical abilities to treat patients from everything from anxiety to cancer, from headaches to gout. At the same time, in western countries, the authors have gone so far as to call the mushroom "the devil's food" by the Roman emperor Nero, or as the philosopher Denis Diderot said about them: "[Mushrooms] are not really good but to be sent back to the dung heap where they are born". No other food group has been called such terrible names, while at the same time being called the "food of the Gods."