Growing your own shiitake mushrooms is a delicious way to make use of your shady spaces. Shiitakes also boost your immune system and are a key component of growing a well-balanced diet yourself. If you’re growing for market, shiitakes are a low maintenance specialty item that is well worth the effort. At this workshop, participants will learn how to plug logs and successfully grow their own shiitakes.
Teacher Bio:
Nazirahk Amen, ND, L.Ac. is a homeopath, naturopathic physician and oriental medicine practitioner for over 15 years in the Washington DC Metro area and resides in Takoma Park, MD. In addition to a busy medical practice, he manages about 5 acres of orchard and vegetable production. He is the owner of Purple Mountain Organics, which offers fine quality tools, growing supplies and sustainable ag services. Dr. Amen is first and foremost a spiritual adherent practicing and refining harmonious living skills for himself and the greater community and is excited to share information and skills gained from this journey
Learn how you can start growing mushrooms with materials you probably already have around the house. Starting with a presentation on the life cycle of mushrooms we will work on cultivating an understanding of our fungal friends as we go through hands on demonstrations from taking spore prints, and easy clones, to starting spores, or commercial culture, on a small amount of material to be expanded onto bunker spawn totes for starting outdoor patches, or straw and logs for fruiting indoors and outside! We will have models of small scale fruiting chambers for growing fresh mushrooms in or outside the home! Participants will leave with starter cakes with their choice of oyster, shiitake, wine cap, nameko, lions mane, and or reishi mushrooms plus straw logs of pink oyster mushrooms!
Date: July 2 from 4-9 pm Cost: $40
Location: Charm City Farms Brick Barn Instructors: William Padilla-Brown
**Notice of cancellation must be given 48-hrs in advance of any of our workshops or events in order to request a refund. Cancellations are subject to a $5 restocking fee.**
About the Instructor
William Padilla-Brown is a social entrepreneur, certified permaculture designer, and multidisciplinary citizen scientist. He has run a non-profit in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania for the past 3 years called Community Compassion, focusing on radical sustainability. He has educated children and adults on topics varying from mushroom cultivation to nutrition via. various workshops and programs. William dropped out of high school at age 16 and has since been pursuing a non-traditional independent approach to his higher education actively promoting alternative education options. William also runs a biology lab/observatory, and mushroom microfarm, MycoSymbiotics, LLC
