Mush!

Another Christmas present is (apparently) coming to fruition!

For Christmas, Jerry gave me an "Espresso Oyster" Mushroom Patch from Fungi Perfecti. They gave it that name because their first choice for growing them is in coffee grounds. (Coffee! Coffee! All living things need Coffee!) They wanted me to accumulate three gallons of grounds to grow the mushrooms in. If I saved the pucks from our four double espressos each day I imagine I could have accumulated the three gallons in about six months. The mushroom spawn would have died long before then. So I did what had to be done...I went to Starbucks. They put their used coffee grounds in bags for us to take home and put in our gardens.

I put the grounds in a bucket and mixed the spawn in and put the plastic bag over it all. I spritzed it daily and in less than three weeks the first little mushrooms have made their appearance! Soon we'll be enjoying freshly harvested mushrooms.

Soon, we'll get sick of eating mushrooms day after day. We'll cover that later.

Here's a picture of the mushrooms. (Click on it for a close up...you can see the cutest little toadstools!)

The largest clump is about an inch across. But they've grown a lot since they first showed up a couple of days ago. They were about the size of coffee grounds (medium grind).

I hope they're not poisonous.