I’ve been thinking about mushrooms. They seem to just sort of “pop up” in places, without any help from us.
Take this little group of mushrooms in this photo. These came up out of the mulch at the back of our house in our landscaping around the pool. We didn’t put down mushroom seeds. No. They just showed up one day uninvited.
It isn’t that I mind them. In fact, I like it when mushrooms appear. They seem magical in that way.
But what about the ones we get in the grocery store? Are they preplanned? Do mushroom farmers plant rows and rows of mushroom seeds and then give those seeds water and poop?
Or are they coming from a tomato farm in Indiana? Did Joe the Tomato Farmer go out and check his crops one day only to find that a big party of mushrooms showed up? So he sent them off to the market.
Well. First of all. Mushrooms are not technically plants. They are fungi.
Fungi are classified as their own kingdom that are separate from plants or animals. Even though mushrooms are usually part of the vegetable group when buying them from stores, they are not a vegetable based on their composition.
People grow them in every state in the U.S. But the number one grower of mushrooms in the U.S. is Pennsylvania. Yep. Pennsylvania accounts for approximately 60 percent of total U.S. mushroom production.
The mushrooms we eat grow indoors. They’re fungi. They don’t even need light to grow and they double in size every day.
Growing mushrooms begins with substrate (an underlying substance or layer) that is made up of nutritional material to serve as a growth base for mushrooms. Then they get spawned, I’m told. I don’t know what that is, but I suppose it is like the “seeding” process.
All of that is put in bedding. Then it gets put in some sort of casing that holds moisture. From there, fungus grows. Mushrooms are harvested by hand throughout a 16-35-day cycle.
And, get this. Mushrooms grow in a small space; 1 acre can grow and harvest 1 million mushrooms annually.
But what about the wild? We don’t do any of that.
As it turns out, they grow in the wild from fungal spores or tissue culture in the right environmental conditions. A spore lands in a damp, dark environment with decaying plant matter. It germinates and starts the whole process.
But to me, the mystery remains. Where did that fungal spore come from in the first place?
Magic Mushroom Faeries. That’ where.
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“Mushrooms are miniature rainforests, wildflower meadows, and vegetable patches, each one its own tiny world.” – Nicola Griffith
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“The world would be a happier place if everyone had a bit of mushroom in them.” – Fergus Henderson
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“Never argue with a mushroom; it’s a fungus and among the most powerful in the world.” – Tom Robbins
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The truth about mushrooms
