Blog
7 Medicinal Mushrooms You Can Harvest in Asheville, NC
Medicinal mushrooms are having a moment. In recent years, these salubrious fungi have stolen the limelight, emerging as trendy cure-alls, smoothie additives, and coffee replacements.
Why Your Garden Needs Mycorrhizal Fungi
Six hundred million years later all the plants we grow for food have their own root systems but the vast majority of these are still dependent on intimate connections with various fungus to source nutrients and water.
It’s taken our science and our agricultural practices a while (few thousand years!) to catch up with this reality.
Mycorrhizal Fungi: Nature’s Most Intimate Relationship
At this point the mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi accounts for between a third and a half of the living mass of our soil. But this living web is being decimated by agricultural practices that see soil as a lifeless substrate for plant growth. By tending to these mycorrhizal relationships we can not only grow more healthy plants in our farms and gardens but we also increase soil health for future generations of all members of our global ecosystems.
How to Harvest Wood Nettles
Nettles are an abundant source of both food and medicine from our eastern forest. Learn how to harvest and prepare them.
How to Harvest Wild Ramps Sustainably
Ramps!! They are delicious and they grow wild in our forests. But do you know how to harvest them without damaging their chances of survival?
Human’s have been existing with these wild foods for thousands of years but recently ramp populations are decreasing in part due to unsustainable harvesting methods. Be part of the movement to keep our wild foods alive and thriving.
Put Your Mushrooms in the Sun
We always put our Shiitakes out in the sun for a couple of hours after we first harvest them - gills up.
It helps to massively increase the amount of Vitamin D they will give to you.
Outdoor Mushroom Cultivation Methods: An Overview
Why not add mushrooms to your garden, yard or forested area?
Here we cover three commonly used, low-tech methods for growing mushrooms outdoors. These are all low-input, organic, beneficial to the environment and will give you the gift of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for years to come.
Reishi Mushrooms: A Conversation
Reishi are known as the Mushroom of Immortality and have been used across time for their highly medicinal properties. In this conversation we explore some of the benefits of reishi and the science supporting it’s use.
Chris Parker: The Man behind the Mushrooms Part 3
In this post Chris shares some inspiring ideas about what to do with your mushroom harvest once you have all these wonderful, tasty, home-grown mushrooms.
Chris Parker: The Man behind the Mushrooms Part 2
In this post Chris supplies us with ideas about why growing mushrooms is so important and of course fun! He is convinced that once anyone has grown their first batch they will want to carry on growing these incredible fungi. He shares some tips for making it even more economical as a protein sources as well.
Chris Parker: The Man behind the Mushrooms Part 1
Chris originates from Western North Carolina and is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He has spent his life in the mountains and forests of North Carolina growing mushrooms, making medicine, learning about plants and creating a successful online mushroom cultivation business.
Feeding our Roots - Finding Belonging
I hear a lot from people I work with about a sense of NOT BELONGING.
I see people struggling every day wanting to live an authentic life but continually running into this idea "I don't belong here so how can I be authentic". Whether it's here on this land, in this group, this body or whatever.
We live in a culture that has forgotten how to belong to one and other and to our land. We have grown up with the myth of the Rugged Individualist, thinking we have to go it alone, we’re better off alone, that we must go out and conquer something. It’s not clear what exactly, material wealth? Social status?