Cold Weather Cold Frame Experiment
We inoculated sawdust and alpaca wool in buckets and created a cold frame with a 6 ft by 6 ft window on hay bales to keep the buckets warm in the cold temperatures. To pasteurize our substrate, we used a low-tech cooler and tea bag method. Both methods use boiling water. For the cooler method, we poured the hot water into the cooler to soak for one hour. The tea bag method was just as it sounds, we put our materials into a sack and submerged it under boiling water for one hour. After the substrate cooled, we inoculated the mixture with blue oyster mushroom spawn donated from Sugar Shack Mushrooms. The blue oyster strain is considered a cold tolerant strain, perfect for our cold frame winter experiment.

Oyster Mushroom on Straw
Using the low tech cooler method to pasteurize our substrate, we inoculated straw recycled from a chicken coop and inoculated it with native oyster mushroom spawn from Sugar Shack Mushrooms. After the fact, we found out through Cornell Cooperative Extension that inoculating contaminated straw might not be food safe. We just let the mushrooms fruit, do their thing, and return to the Earth to be safe.

Mushroom Cultivation 101 at Sugar Shack Mushrooms (Part 3)
We hosted a beginner series that included a hands-on opportunity for all to participate in mycelium cloning in the lab.  The Mushroom Shed community members made petri dishes of Wine Cap which were then grown out by Sugarshack to produce all of the Wine Cap spawn for our demo mushroom gardens. There was also a toilet paper oyster inoculation demo in which all participants took home a roll of toilet paper they had inoculated.

Mushroom Cultivation 101 (Part 1)
In January of 2020, we created a 3 part Mushroom Cultivation 101 series to help all members of the community have an equal base knowledge of how mushrooms grow and provide an overview of different growing methods. We hoped to utilize this knowledge base to create a plan for our community mushroom garden together as a community and as a way to better understand community needs and interests.

Field Trip to Nature Lab in Troy, NY
Mushroom Shed hosted a field trip to the Nature Lab located in the Sanctuary for Independent Media, a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds.

Korean Natural Farming Inputs
We led an in-depth demo on making Water Soluble Calcium. We broke up and cooked egg shells and then added vinegar which has a chemical reaction (and sort of looks like a homemade lava lamp!) that extracts the calcium from the egg shells. The end result, can be used in your garden, and is particularly helpful in making sure that your tomatoes do not get blight.

Korean Natural Farming Biochar
Farmer, Joe Lorusso walked us through a demo and presentation on making bio char and the benefits it can have in your garden. Biochar is used as a soil additive for both carbon sequestration and soil health benefits.

Shiitake Log Inoculation
We inoculated logs using the drill and fill method to expand our community mushroom garden at our project site in New Paltz, NY. We drilled holes and inoculated the logs with shiitake sawdust spawn donated from Sugar Shack Mushrooms and sealed the holes with a mixture of beeswax and paraffin. The mushrooms that fruited have crackled caps which are said to be more medicinal by some growers.

Indigenous Micro-organisms (IMO)
Using traditional Korean Natural Farming (KNF) techniques, we experimented with inoculating spent mushroom blocks with IMO an important input in KNF. To make IMO, we left a breathable container of lightly cooked rice out for a few days and waited for it to collect local microbes. Using this process, you can make healthy soil in just a few days.

Mushroom Cultivation 101 (Part 2)
A discussion and hands-on inoculation that was Part II of our 3 part Mushroom Cultivation 101 series. The discussion was based on the basics of mushroom cultivation, and was intended to gauge what aspects of mushroom cultivation members were interested in so that we could create a plan to grow mushrooms together in our community mushroom garden. for the upcoming spring, summer and fall. After the discussion, Catskill Fungi led a coffee ground Oyster inoculation demo that everyone took home with them in containers.

Presentation on Mycophilic Organisms by Luke Sarrantonio
Community mushroom educator and Mushroom Shed collaborator, Luke Sarranto, gave a comprehensive overview of the history of mushrooms, how they show up in our everyday, and the many different ways we can cultivate them.

Mushroom Burritos
For our first hands-on mushroom experiment with the community, we inoculated oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds in jars and rolled up the spawn in cardboard to make “burritos” which members all took home.

An Unwelting Workshop with Attention to Mushrooms
An umwelt is the surrounding world of a type of organism. Carol Padberg, artist and educator led us through a workshop where we wore handmade sensory objects and utilized learning prompts to instigate playful, embodied inquiry into the umwelt of mushrooms. This helped us to awaken new senses, perceive the invisible, make sense of smell, and exercise wonder as we experienced the fungal queendom. Humans contain more non-human DNA than human DNA, and much of this genetic material is fungi that lives within and on our varied mycomes and biomes.

Mushroom Shed Opening Ceremony
Our very first event was the Mushroom Shed Festival in May 2019. The festival celebrated the community and all of the businesses, organizations, and groups that had come together to make the project a reality. We served up mushroom coffee, mushroom scones, mushroom beer, mushroom pizza, and hosted hands-on inoculation and learning demos.