Recently I re-discovered this fabulous diagram and accompanying notes by Paul Stamets. It’s basically an outline of how to deeply integrate mycology and edible mushroom propagation into a small permaculture farm system, point by point. Thank you, Mr Stamets.

I first encountered this diagram in Paul Stamets’ most excellent book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. The diagram is sub titled The Stametsian Model for a Synergistic Mycosphere, so I’ll let Paul take it from here. Please read on…

“When gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are involved as key organisms in the recycling agricultural and forest by-products, the bio dynamics of permaculture soar to extraordinary levels of productivity.

Not only are mushrooms a protein-rich food source for humans, but the by-products of mushrooms cultivation unlock nutrients for other members of the ecological community. The rapid return of nutrients back into the ecosystem boosts the life cycles of plants, animals, insects (bees), and soil microflora.

What follows is a short list of the ways mushrooms can participate in permaculture. The numbers are keyed to the numbers in the accompanying illustration: The Stametsian Model for Permaculture With a Mycological Twist. (See above)

Oyster mushrooms growing in straw

1. Oyster Mushrooms
Oyster mushrooms can be grown indoors on pasteurized corn stalks, wheat, rice, & rye straw and a wide range of other materials including paper and pulp by-products.

Soaking bulk substrates in cold water creates a residual “tea” that is a nutritious fertilizer and potent insecticide. Submerging the bulk substrate in hot water produces a different brew of “tea”": a naturally potent herbicide. Oyster mushrooms can also be grown on hardwood stumps and logs.

(Some varieties of Oyster mushrooms in P. pulmonarius species complex naturally grow on conifer wood.) Pleurotus thrive in complex compost piles, and are easy to grow outside with minimum care.

The waste substrate from Oyster production is useful as fodder for cows, chickens, & pigs. Since half of the mass of dry straw is liberated as gaseous carbon dioxide, pumping this CO2 from mushroom growing rooms into greenhouses to enhance plant production makes good sense.(Cultivators filter the airstream from the mushroom growing rooms so spores are eliminated.)

Furthermore, the waste straw can be mulched into garden soils, not only to provide structure and nutrition, but also to reduce the populations of nematodes which are costly to gardeners and farmers.

King Stropharia

2. King Stropharia
This mushroom is an ideal player in the recycling of complex wood debris and garden wastes, and thrives in complex environments. Vigorously attacking wood (sawdust, chips, twigs, branches), the King Stropharia also grows in wood-free substrates, particularly soils supplemented with chopped straw.

I have seen this mushroom flourish in gardens devoid of wood debris, benefiting the growth of neighboring plants. Acclimated to northern latitudes, this mushroom fruits when air temperatures range between 60-90° F (15-32° C) which usually translates to ground temperatures of 55-65° F (13-18° C).

For 6 weeks one summer our bees attacked a King Stropharia bed, exposing the mycelium to the air, and suckled the sugar-rich cytoplasm from the wounds. A continuous convoy of bees could be traced, from morning to evening, from our beehives to the mushroom patch, until the bed of King Stropharia literally collapsed.

When a report of this phenomenon was published in Harrowsmith Magazine (Ingle, 1988), bee keepers across North America wrote me to explain that they had been long mystified by bees’ attraction to sawdust piles. Now it is clear the bees were seeking the underlying sweet mushroom mycelium.

King Stropharia is an excellent edible mushroom when young. However, its edibility quickly declines as the mushrooms mature. Fly larvae proliferate inside the developing mushrooms. In raising silver salmon, I found that when I threw mature mushrooms into the fish-holding tank, they would float. Fly larvae soon emerged from the mushrooms, struggling for air.

Soon the fish were striking the large mushrooms to dislodge the swollen larvae into the water where they were eagerly consumed. After several days of feeding mushrooms to the fish, the salmon would excitedly strike at the King Stropharia in anticipation of the succulent, squirming larvae as the mushrooms hit the water.

Inadvertently, I had discovered that King Stropharia is a good base medium for generating fish food.

Growing King Stropharia can have other beneficial applications in permaculture. King Stropharia depends upon bacteria for growth. At our farm which included a small herd of Black Angus cows, I established two King Stropharia beds at the heads of ravines which drained onto a saltwater beach where my neighbor commercially cultivates oysters and clams. Prior to installing these mushroom beds, fecal coliform bacteria seriously threatened the water quality.

Once the mycelium fully permeated the sawdust/chip beds, downstream fecal bacteria was largely eliminated. The mycelium in effect became a micro-filtration membrane. I had discovered that by properly locating mushroom beds, “gray water” run-off could be cleaned of bacteria and nitrogen rich effluent. Overall water quality improved. Massive mushrooms formed.

After three to four years, chunks of wood are totally reduced into a rich, peat-like soil, ideal for the garden. For nearly 8 years, I have continued to install King Stropharia beds in depressions leading into sensitive watersheds. Government agencies, typically slow to react to good ideas, have finally recognized the potential benefits of mycofiltration.

Test plots are currently being implanted and monitored to more precisely determine the effects on water quality. If successful, I envision the widespread installation of King Stropharia beds into basins leading into rivers, lakes, and bodies of saltwater.

Lions Mane mushroom

3. Shiitake/Nameko/Lion’s Manes
Outdoors, inoculated logs can be partially buried or lined up in fence-like rows. Once the logs have stopped producing, the softened wood can be broken up, sterilized, and re-inoculated. Indoors, these mushrooms can be grown on sterilized substrates or on logs using the methods described in this book.

Once the indoor substrates cease production, they can be recycled and re-inoculated with another mushroom, a process I call species sequencing. (See Chapter XXII.) Later, the expired production blocks can be buried in sawdust or soil to elicit bonus crops outdoors.

Clustered woodlovers mushrooms

4. Maitake/Reishi/Clustered Woodlovers
Several species can be incorporated into the management of a sustainable multi-stage, complex Medicinal Mushroom Forest. Logs can be inoculated and buried or stumps can be impregnated. The greatest opportunities for stump culture are regions of the world w here hardwoods predominate. Presently, only a few gourmet and medicinal mushrooms grow on coniferous woods.

Nevertheless, Enokitake (Flammulina velutipes), Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), Clustered Woodlovers (Hypholoma capnoides), Chicken-of-the-Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus), and Oyster (Pleurotus spp.) are good candidates for both conifer and hardwood stump decomposition.

Shaggy Manes

5. Shaggy Manes
A cosmopolitan mushroom, Shaggy Manes (Coprinus comatus) grow in rich manured soils, disturbed habitats, in and around compost piles, and in grassy and gravel areas. Shaggy Manes are extremely adaptive and tend to wander. Shaggy Mane patches behave much like King Stropharia and Morels, travelling great distances from their original site of inoculation in their search for fruiting niches.

Morels

6. Morels
Morels grow in a variety of habitats, from abandoned apple orchards and diseased elms to gravelly roads and stream beds. However, the habitat that can be reproduced easily is the burn-site. Burn-sites, although increasingly restricted because of air pollution ordinances, are common among country homesteads. If a burn-site is not possible, there are alternatives.

The complex habitat of a garden compost pile also supports Morel growth. When planting cottonwood trees, you can introduce spawn around the root zones in hopes of creating a perennial Morel patch. Cultivators should note that Morels are fickle and elusive by nature compared to more predictable species like King Stropharia, Oyster and Shiitake mushrooms.

Root mycorrhiza

7. Mycorrhizal Species
Mycorrhizal species can be introduced via several techniques. The age-old, proven method of satellite planting is probably the simplest. By planting young seedlings around the bases of trees naturally producing Chanterelles, King Boletes, Matsutake, Truffles or other desirable species, you may establish satellite colonies by replanting the young trees after several years of association.

For those landowners who inherit a monoculture woodlot of similarly aged trees, the permaculturally inclined steward could plant a succession of young trees so that, over time, a multi-canopy forest could be re-established.

8. The Sacred Psilocybes
In the Pacific Northwest of North America, the Psilocybes figure as some of the most frequently found fungi in landscaping bark and wood chips. These mushrooms share a strong affinity towards human activities -from chopping wood, the planting of ornamentals, landscaping around buildings, to the creation of refuse piles. Many spiritually inclined cultivators view the establishment of Sacred Psilocybe Mushroom Patches as another step towards living in harmony within their ecosystem.

These are but a few mushroom species that can be incorporated into the permaculture model. Part of a larger, community-based permaculture strategy should also include Mushroom Response Teams (MRT’s) which could react quickly to catastrophic natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, floods in the profitable recycling of the enormous debris fields they generate.

Clearly, the use of mushrooms energizes permaculture to a level otherwise not attainable. I hope readers will develop these concepts further. When fungi are incorporated into these models, the ecological health of the whole planet will benefit enormously.”

Taken from Paul Stamet’s most excellent book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. ©1994, all rights reserved.

Whoohoo! And if that doesn’t completely  get you going, try the latest image of our pink oyster mushrooms which are nearly ready to eat:

Pink oyster mushrooms, (with 3 year old’s finger for scale)

In other Milkwood mushroom news, on the back of our last very successful mushroom propagation course, Will Borowski has confirmed two more dates where students will be taken from start to finish in many different techniques of mushroom propagation, so they can get home and get growing:

• Mushroom cultivation course: 22-23 Sept, Sydney
• Mushroom cultivation course: 13-14 Oct, Milkwood Farm

… Read more about mushrooms at Milkwood – propagating, books and resources and other fungally inclined posts…

Cheers to the fab Alicia Boyd for the reminder about this excellent diagram and notes.

Earthbags are a great idea for building raised garden bed surrounds because of their simplicity and their strength.

Recently Nick led a community workshop to transform a townhouse patio into an edible landscape, with earthbag surrounds for a set of bathtub wicking beds…

The patio before the install

Wicking bed bathtubs arrive! And patio is cleared and ready for action.

Our mate Charlie from Ecolicious helped out, delivering a truckfull of earth left over after a pond had been dug for one of his current aquaponics installs…

Monique (patio owner) doing some prep by compacting the earth prior to the workshop…

The plan – a series of bathtub wicking beds, surrounded and supported by earthbag walls…

‘Tamping’ down the earth to compact it prior to laying the bags, using our trusty earthbag tampers…

Filling the first bag!

Nick did hourly explanations of the process to the rolling roster of workshoppers throughout the day…

Tamping the bags flat…

First course laid, with barbed wire on top to improve tensile strength between layers of earthbags…

Laying wire on top of the second course of earthbags…

Cuppa time!

Towards the end the daylight ended, but a stalwart crew pressed on to finish the job…

Fabulous workshoppers looking forward to pizza and beer appearing shortly after a big day…

The result the next day – raised bed walls are finished and sturdy, with bathtubs installed!

Following on from this workshop, Monique will be hard at it in the coming weeks installing the innards of her bathtub wicking beds, and planting up her garden! She’ll also need to render the outside of the bags to protect them long term, using some sort of waterproof render. Options for this include:

Hessian-crete – hessian bags dipped in a rapid-set cement slurry and then draped over the walls- we’ve never tried this, but we rekon it would work well, and use the least cement! > link to Burlap-crete project

Ferrocement (often used in rendering outside earthbag installations) – ferrocement garden beds in the Milkwood Farm kitchen garden, and an earthbag seat project using ferrocement

Hempcrete – with a stiff mix, this might be a possibility… Hempcrete Australia website

• Here’s a bunch of resources on earthbag building
• The earthbag projects we’ve tackled so far
• Here’s a heap of wicking bed resources

Many thanks to everyone who contributed their time and efforts towards a great day, from all across Sydney – it was great to have you all there! Thanks particularly to those stalwarts who stayed on past 4pm to finish the job… you all rock!

This workshop was held as part of the celebrations for International Permaculture Day, which is all about getting involved in community resilience, whether by touring a garden, attending a picnic or getting grubby whacking great long bags of earth…

Lastly a note from Monique, whose patio this all occurred in: Thanks to Nick Ritar from Milkwood Permaculture for facilitating this amazing Earthbag building workshop; Charlie Bacon from Ecolicious (aquaponics systems, ponds and organic gardens) for helping me move over a tonne of clay; Peter Wright from Gaia Gardens for picking up and delivering 3 bathtubs from Kimbriki for me at very short notice + Kirsten Bradley for co-creating the idea of having a workshop on National Permaculture Day (and volunteering her husband to run it).

And thanks to all the fabulous volunteers / participants throughout the day : Adriana, Andre A., Andrea C., Andrea Pape, Craig Duckmanton, Daniel C., Diana E., Diana Watson, Dianne M., Ian H, Joy J., Julio B., Kat T., Linda S., Marcelo B., Margo C., Martha M (in Sydney for a wedding for a few days, and who’s partner demanded that she pop in to see what was going on so she could tell him all about it when she got back to Turkey… love it!), Michael C., Mike M., Misa Z., Monika B., Monique Unger, Nathan C., Peter W., Phillip E., Robin S., Sarah B. & Stu R.  Awesome job everyone! Thank you!

A small sample of the many fabulous folks who attended the workshop – thanks everyone!

Yesterday  Nick got interviewed about that viral image of Glass Gem Corn, and why the response has been so great: “When you first look at that photo it is beautiful, then there’s a realisation for people where it clicks: “That’s real.”

This is a corn that’s been developed over thousands of years and there’s a level of connection running back through human culture,” he said.

“You can’t buy that at a supermarket. It’s not the latest trend or fad; it goes much deeper than that.

Food is something we, as a western culture, do really badly. The way it’s being grown is not sustainable, ethical or ecologically sound. There’s tens of thousands of varieties of corns, same with tomatoes, but if you look in a supermarket you might be offered two or three varieties.

The major supplier of seed to farmers in Australia offers less than 12 varieties of corn, and most of those are for animal feed. It’s about economy of scale. Economy of scale is always in competition with diversity. But there is a wave happening around the world where people are realising the overwhelming lack of ecological soundness of western culture.

When you present people with a way to connect back with nature their passion is ignited.

People started this journey with shows like MasterChef and now they crave those real ingredients and are seeking them out through food providores and farmers markets, Nick said.

“People want a story with their food …read the rest of the article here

If you’d like to learn more about why heirloom seed stocks are so important, and how you can integrate them into you community’s food supply, Hannah Moloney will be going into detail on this topic as part of our Urban Permaculture Design Course in Sydney this July…

The latest batch of Milkwood permaculture design students are currently hard at it in Sydney, taking their Permaculture Design Certificate part-time with the fabulous Alexia Martinez. I thought I’d share some of their latest permaculture designs…

These designs are all the student’s first full permaculture design, undertaken using a place they know well as the site. This design exercise is all about working with what you’ve got, both good and bad. Bring on the shady patios, the hot brick walkways, and the unused verges. It’s all potential for abundance, with the help of good planning and design…

Hooray for relative location, sector analysis, observation and interaction. So exciting to know another bunch of permaculture designers will soon be out there in the wide and wonderful fabric of Sydney. This can only be a good thing for resilient futures in this fine city!

If you’d like to learn more about permaculture design and how to retrofit (or design from scratch) a site that provides for your needs and doesn’t cost the earth, our next two Permaculture Design Certificates are happening!

• Urban Permaculture Design Certificate: Sydney: July 2012
• Permaculture Design Certificate: Milkwood Farm (Mudgee): November 2012

… More about permaculture design at Milkwood

This morning I woke up to a delayed Mothers Day of pancakes, sticky kisses and… a bag of pink oyster mushrooms, just starting to fruit! How amazing are they?

The reason for the delay was that Nick was in Sydney teaching a mushroom cultivation workshop with Will Borowski. But it was worth the wait to gaze apon such an intriguing terrarium of awesome edible fungi all morning. They’ll obviously get a lot bigger than this shortly…

The little world inside this bag combines nuances many of my most favorite things – terrariums, fungi, underwater reefs, miniature worlds, and of course food. Mustn’t forget that.

This bag of sawdust spawn (after being made via this process) has been slowly colonized by the pink oyster mushroom mycelium over the past couple of months, and now it’s ready to burst into fruit.

Once you see the fruiting bodies of the fungi (that being the mushrooms) start to appear, you cut a couple of holes in the bag where the mushrooms are, mist the holes daily, and await the harvest.

In a dry climate like ours at Milkwood Farm, it’s best to leave the spawn inside the bag, as this helps keep the block moist, and just cut a couple of holes for the mushrooms to fruit out of… if we were in higher humidity, this wouldn’t be as necessary.

Stand by for photos of the full harvest! I wonder how we should best cook such beautiful food… hmm…

Pink Oyster Mushrooms in full fruit. © Sherrie Thai of ShaireProductions.

Quick plug: If you’d like to learn how to clone any shop-bought mushroom and propagate yourself a lifetime supply (for very little setup cost) with a variety of indoor and outdoor cultivation techniques, we’ll be doing more Mushroom Cultivation workshops with Will Borowski in the Spring.

We’re just finalizing dates currently (Will is a bit busy) so if you’re interested hop on our mailing list and we’ll announce the next lot of dates shortly – cheers!

• More about mushrooms at Milkwood (how tos, foraging and more)

This one is for all the heirloom corn fans out there (and this completely includes me). The genetic diversity of maize is intense. It’s also the most widely grown crop in the Americas.

About 80% of maize grown in the USA is now GMO, and that makes the heirloom varieties even more precious. Thankfully, there are thousands of varieties. And many of them are exquisite…

‘Glass Gem’ corn, via Seeds Trust

So on Thursday I posted up to facebook the above picture I’d come across of Glass Gem corn, and the result was startling. So many, many people were so excited by this incredible image, and what it said about so much in this world of ours. And all from a cob of corn.

So in the spirit of drooling over incredible heirloom ‘grinding corn’ (i.e. the sort of corn one grinds for corn meal, as opposed to eats on the cob), I went looking, and here is some of what I found. Click on the images for sources (where available)…

Peruvian corn, drying

‘Gem Corn’ is available through at least two heirloom seed suppliers in the USA that I know of, and no doubt through many seed savers networks. Please support these small enterprises preserving genetic diversity for everyone:

• Gem Corn at Seeds Trust
• Gem Corn at Native Seeds

An even better bet, and one that will result in regular delight as you discover just how cool heirloom varieties can be, would be to join up to your local seed savers network:

• Seed savers network + local groups in Australia
• Good list of local seed saving networks in the US
• USA Seed Savers Network looks more like an enterprise, but still (including some very cool maize)
• Irish Seed Savers
• Also see the valuable Seed Savers blog for Jude + Michel Fanton’s global travels collecting and documenting heirloom seed banks.

Viva la maize! Not sure how many of the incredible varieties above are available in Australia… any leads, anyone? Or has anyone had success ordering such seeds from overseas, and having the seeds actually make it over here?

There is nothing quite like a feijoa – they are simply the most amazing fruit. Fragrant, pungent, sweet yet sour, gooey in the middle and grainy round the edges. The original yum in a small green torpedo.

They also tend to appear as a surprise in large quantities when ripe, probably because they’re so darn hard to see on the tree. If you’re planting them, plant them in a high-traffic area, lest you miss their amazingness until it’s too late in the season…

Feijoa fruit and flower (why it was still vaguely flowering in Autumn I’m not quite sure)

Why you can end up with a glut – feijoas are hard to see, when hidden by their foliage (there are actually 36 feijoas in this photo. Ok not really, but there could be!)…

The feijoa is also known as pineapple guava or guavasteen. Wikipedia says it’s native to South America only, though widely cultivated in New Zealand. It’s an evergreen shrub that grows to 7m and is frost tolerant (yay), growing in temperate and sub-tropical areas.

You can eat the flower petals but that would result in less fruit so I would highly advise against such a terrible thing. And if you really want to kill off the romance while biting into one (an incredible sensation), just remember that the aroma is due to the ester methyl benzoate and related compounds.

Ok so now you (well I do, at anyrate) have your feijoas in quantity. You could eat them all right now, though it would take some time. But should you? Or should you try and spread the love across the seasons, so to speak?

If it was up to me, and me alone, i think i would just eat them all, straight up. I might look like a feijoa by the end of it (round, tight and green) but it would be worth it.

But what about the rest of the year? Or the feijoa-void, as one might call it? It is a long time till next autumn.

So in the interests of  distributing both diverse flavors and vitamins across the seasons, i asked the question of our facebook page how best to preserve feijoas, and here is a tiny sample of the very helpful suggestions that came back:

The feijoa page from the Food Forest in Gawler, SA (they also have an awesome DVD, which goes well beyond feijoas)

Feijoa Feijoa – an entire blog dedicated to feijoa recipes. Includes feijoa wine (which looks quite easy).

Microwave Feijoa jam! Cook your fruit with just enough water to cover and then measure it. Return to bowl and add an equal quantity of sugar. Cook to setting point (check with chilled saucer from the freezer) and bottle in sterilised jars. I also like to experiment with spices like cardamon, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. A splash of wine can be nice too. – Meg McGowan

Feijoa tart, by tinyhappy. Yum.

So. I’m off to peel my gazillions of feijoas and get to it. Compote is looking good, as is the wine and the jam. Any other brilliant recipes I should be aware of?

On facebook, a picture of a small island with high cliffs and a caption ‘this should keep the zombies out’. It’s like a socially acceptable way of joking about how scared you are of what the future may hold, without giving away just how scared you are. But it’s more than that. And recently I’ve figured out why I find the whole zombie apocalypse thing so creepy.

Firstly I should say that themes of disaster preparedness, crisis crops, societal collapse and a bunch of other unsettling concepts are on the fringe of what we do at Milkwood daily, which is talk about, teach, learn and share resources about sustainable living and regenerative farming.

We get a portion of students who have chosen to ‘skill up’ on the skills and theory we’re involved with because they are anticipating that one day soon it will all go to hell and they’d better be ready. We try to offset (or at least manage) this sort of student’s outlook by focusing on what we can do to create abundant, resilient futures for communities (and we can do an awful lot).

But that doesn’t change the fact that whenever someone starts joking about the zombie apocalypse I start feeling creeped out, weird and very angry all at once. I’ve been wondering why for a while – do i just not have a sense of humor? Is it that i actually subliminally believe in zombies and I’m just not being honest with myself? Recently I managed to unpack this problem, and here’s what I came up with.

My problem with the whole ‘zombie apocalypse’ joke in reference to disaster preparedness is that when someone mentions it, what they are doing is publicly stating that they are playing with the idea of considering anyone beyond the walls of their future ‘safe zone’ as dehumanized brain eaters, who may be dealt with as needed without moral implications, should a crisis arise.

And that’s why I’m not down with the whole zombie apocalypse thing. The implicit and necessary dehumanization of ‘the other’, which in a nutshell means everyone on the other side of your fortress wall. I.e. your former community.

Not that this is anything new, really – we’ve been dehumanizing the enemy for a very long time, with some spectacular examples emerging during wartime where propaganda machines turned former neighbors into sub-human monsters. There’s many excellent books written on this subject.

But it’s the fact that the whole zombie apocalypse thing is actually trendy in our current culture that really creeps me out. Which means playing with the idea of perhaps one day needing to dehumanize anyone beyond the walls of your fortress/homestead/safe-house is also trendy.

As I wrote last winter in Survivalism is the new Black, I honestly don’t think the whole fortress mentality will get anyone very far in a crisis anyways. It’s simplistic thinking, in my view. A more resilient model for a societal collapse would be a strong community of skilled and interconnected folks who are all very capable and able to contribute to a common goal of resilience. Or in other words:

Ok so society fails and your community has to fend for itself. If you hear that the much-needed doctor, or the midwife, or the blacksmith in your community is in danger, everyone’s going to come running, because they’re defending an essential community resource, not just an individual.

So rather than building a fortress and getting lots of guns and probably dying of loneliness, how about becoming so bloody useful that your immediate community can’t do without you? Sounds safer to me. More fun, too.

Ahem. So that’s it on that subject from me. Apologies to all zombie lovers, I mean no offense.

I am just deeply wondering what it means that we’re all happily playing with dehumanization in relation to disaster, at this point in western history.

Think I’ll go back to drying apples for winter and planning our next round of skill-share workshops. And standing in the bright sunshine, and being thankful.

Oh and by the way, Happy International Permaculture Day, everyone!

Yesterday Ashar and I went mushroom foraging at our local pine forest, just to see what there might be after a rainy day in Autumn. And look what we found! Slippery Jacks. Yum.

Slippery Jacks are usually found in pine forests. Or at least that’s the only place I’ve ever seen them. We found these on the forest’s edge, in the grass, near a quiet road.

They are slippery on top and have this fantastic pore-structure beneath, which is sturdy yet spongy. They are found across the world in pine forests, and have all sorts of local names, my favorite being ‘sticky bun mushroom’.

Once you have your Slippery Jacks, you need to peel the brown sticky part off before eating them, as it’s not so digestible. I also read that it’s best to take the spore/sponge part off, and in the interests of wanting my 3 year old to actually eat them, I did that too.

After all that peeling, you’re still left with a surprisingly meaty mushroom which smells fantastic. We already had a lasagna feast (with Milkwood passata) planned for dinner, so we decided to dry these mushrooms to concentrate their flavor, and save them for Winter soups.

So into my new whizz-bang dryer the Slippery Jacks went, and 3 hours later, out came crispy little golden crescents that taste damn fine.

Peeled top and bottom

Winter stewdom, here we come…

So if you’re near a pine forest (or even just a small stand of them up the back of the street) this weekend in temperate Australia, go forth and forage! May you find many Slippery Jacks. Also look out for Saffron Milk caps.

CAVEAT: When foraging for mushrooms, do your research and know what you’re looking for – it’s not rocket science, but you do need to be clear about what you are looking for, and whether that species has any toxic ‘look alikes’. Have a look at our recommended books on fungi found in Australia. And if in doubt, don’t eat it.

CAVEAT II: Via Kuba on the Milkwood Facebook page – There are other boletes (sponge-gilled mushrooms) in Australia that are inedible, either because they taste bad, or because they are poisonous. For novices: if a bolete is bright red and/or it turns dark blue when cut or bruised, then it isn’t edible (nor psychoactive, despite the blue staining). Just wanted to point that out because I’ve found the toxic Boletus barragensis growing near Slippery Jacks and they can look quite alike (except for the bluing).

Lastly here is a good post i found on Slippery Jacks from a fellow forager. And of course our friend Diego at Wild Stories, who just came back from another successful mushroom hunt.

If you’re really keen and want to take mushrooms to a year-round thing, you could do worse than go to the Mushroom Cultivation workshop we’re running in Sydney next weekend which will get you cloning, spawning, cultivating and fruiting a bunch of different and delicious mushrooms like a mad thing.

>> more posts about growing and eating mushrooms at Milkwood.net

Nick was asked by International Permaculture Day 2012 to video his take on permaculture, so here it is. Recorded stealthily during naptime, to avoid the otherwise ever-present soundtrack of a joyful 3 year old.

This International Permaculture Day we’re heading to the city to run an Earthbag bench workshop, but there’s a lot of other things to see and do this weekend, in over 17 countries! Check it all out at International Permaculture Day 2012…