Tag Archives: shade

Mushroom Cultivating in the City

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

LowTech Mushrooms

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

Medicinal Mushrooms

This 1-day class is a deep exploration into the world of mushrooms and mushroom medicine. Through lecture and demonstration, we’ll explore the life cycle of fungi, and the basic biology and ecology of mushrooms to understand why mushrooms are medicinal for us and how growing conditions affect their medicinal and nutritional content.

We’ll then explore the amazing medicinal qualities that come from mushrooms, especially local wild species, and how to prepare them.

Participants will taste some amazing medicinal mushroom teas and learn easy ways to use mushrooms for immune health. Participants will also walk away with samples of locally harvested medicinal mushroom tea.

This class covers three main topics:
*The lifecycle and basic biology of mushrooms
*An introduction to the amazing medicine from medicinal mushrooms
*The ability of mushrooms to degrade toxic man-made waste in nature

Date: June 19, 9am- 1pm        Cost: $40

Location: The Johnston Square Brick Barn, Baltimore 21202       Instructor: Jared Urchek

**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:

Jared Urchek, L.Ac, CZB, is a Five-Element acupuncturist, certified Zero Balancer, and a cultivator of gourmet & medicinal mushrooms.  He is enthralled by the beauty and the healing power of Nature.  Growing up in the woods of northeast Ohio, he found the woods to be comforting, healing, and inspiring even as a youngster. Learning about the wonders of the fungal Kingdom through a permaculture class started a lifelong passion for the cultivation and use of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. Jared is also profoundly inspired by Chinese medicine and its ability to help people heal on all levels – body, mind, and spirit. Imagine his surprise in learning that all the great medicinal and gourmet mushrooms were also potent Chinese medicinal herbs? Jared offers private and group acupuncture sessions, a growing line of medicinal mushroom products, and various classes and workshops to spread the healing knowledge of these vital traditions.

About the Location:

The “Brick Barn” is a brick garage turned classroom space on Charm City Farms’ newest Permaculture farm space, a triple vacant, city-owned lot in the Johnston Square area of Baltimore. The Brick Barn serves as a classroom space for Permaculture Design Certificate courses, a workshop, and a community gathering space, with future plans to include produce processing and to serve as a local goods trading post.

The address to the barn is 1310 Hillman St, Baltimore, MD 21202, directly across from Green Mount Cemetery.