Welcome to Peter McCoy author of Radical Mycology

Photo Source: RadicalMycology

This week Peter McCoy will be joining us to talk about Fungi
The most overlooked and misrepresented organisms in the web of life

There are four copies of his book, Radical Mycology up for grabs.

Peter will be stopping by on the forum over the next few days answering questions and joining in discussions.

From now through this Friday, any posts in this forum, ie the Fungi forum, could be selected to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up in Paul's Daily-ish email.

The winner will be notified by email and must respond within 24 hours.

Posts in this thread won't count, but please feel free to say hi to Peter and make him feel welcome!

Welcome to the forum. I know I am not the only person looking forward to hearing your insights in the coming week. Thanks for joining us!

Consider yourself welcome, Peter.

I've been thinking up constructive questions since I heard you were going to be around.

Peter,
Welcome. So glad to have you joining us. I think this is going to be an exciting and interesting week.

Welcome and thank you for visiting us.

I know precious little about mycology, but having you here is motivating me to learn.

Please forgive me for being single minded, but will we have a chance to learn about using mushrooms for textile dye?

Courtesy of Paul Stamets' Mycelium Running, I've been encouraged to defeat a life long phobia of ingesting mushrooms. I started by doing a lot of reading of medical issues. Then, one day, I bought two button mushrooms at my coop. The shrooms went home and sat on a table until I finally went over and bit into one. I didn't die. So I'm in the process of expanding my mushroom experiments. I want to grow some mushrooms in northeast Wisconsin, zone 4b, where I have a maple-beech-birch forest. Any strong recommendations?

And thanks for joining the forums! I look forward to reading Radical Mycology.

Welcome welcome! I have been enjoying mushrooms for decades and have been very interested in attempting to grow them but not sure if it's possible to create a growing situation(shed, greenhouse, etc.) in the high desert so I'm very interested in learning more!

I'm new to Permies.com (although I've been slinking around unnoticed and unannounced for some time) & new to the mushroom world, so looking forward to the info shared in this thread.

Welcome Peter!

Love the videos and all of the information you've been sharing.

I was hoping that you're appearance at Bonaroo, would sway my wife to make the trip to Tennessee for a vacation. Sadly no. I hope to make the 3 hour trip from PA to DC if my schedule allows in May since it is the closest appearance on you schedule this year.

Looking forward to hearing more. Welcome, Peter!

Welcome, Peter! Went to your very informative presentation at the IMA a few months back and I'm looking forward to this. Have inoculated shiitake logs (no fruiting bodies - yet) and first attempt oysters indoors (failed). Very interested in creating medicinal tinctures. Thank you!

I've been looking to purchase this book.. I just grew my first oyster mushrooms and want to do more.

Hey folks,
Thanks so much for the nice welcome. I will be keeping an eye on the thread today and will be at the computer around 4 pm PST tomorrow (Tuesday) if any of you want to have a bit of a dialogue. To answer some of the questions that have already come up:

Yes! I can talk about mushroom and lichen dyeing. It is quite easy and similar to plant dyeing. Though you can get some colors (such as red) with mushrooms that are harder to get with plants. Alum and iron are safe and simple mordants. In my book I have a whole chart on what fungi produce which color papers and dyes. If you have more specific questions about dyeing, fire away!

@Douglas Buege: A maple-beech-birch forest is IDEAL for growing mushrooms. All those tree species are good candidates for many gourmet and medicinal mushrooms (Pioppino, oysters, maitake, wood ear, lion's mane, reishi, shiitake, nameko, turkey tail). These are some of the more well-known species, some of which are quite easy to grow. You may even have many wild edible/medicinal mushrooms growing on or near these trees that you could harvest. Chaga looks like a big black gall but is deep, rich red inside. It is very medicinal and makes a delicious, coffee-like tea.

Yes! There are ways to grow fungi in the desert. I taught a Mushroom Cultivation & Application Course in Santa Fe last year that focused on overcoming the humidity and heat issues.

Ok, well that's a little teaser. Please shoot me pointed questions and I will do my best to answer them all. Looking forward to the week!

Peter

Welcome Peter!

A lot of the members have already asked some pretty interesting questions in their own threads and are eagerly awaiting your responses.

Follow this link to all the current questions - permies fungi forum

Check! I will keep on an eye on the forum! looking forward to it yall!

Hohoho you really hit the forum hard! Tomorrow Peter will be around again and will start answering your questions.

Wow we are really on fungi on permies, so happy to see so many of us are curious about this topic.

Benvenuto!

I look forward to learning more about fungi and their proper role in growing food and other plants.

Le

HEY PETER!!!

THANK YOU!!!

Radical Mycology is AMAZING!! It's the Big Black Book of Mycology (like Bill Mollison's Big Black Book of Permaculture). It's sitting within arms reach of me right now

I would love to know what to innoculate in black walnut stumps. I'm looking forward to your input

welcome.

Jeff,
The edible and medicinal Lion's Mane mushroom as well as the medicinal Wood Ear can grow on Black Walnut.

Cheers
Peter

Welcome, Peter!

I, too, like Fredy am hoping to acquire land in the next few months. I love the idea of using fungi to mitigate any previous or current contaminants thereon. Can't wait to see all your answers to the many interesting and pertinent questions already posted. I'm sure we will all learn a lot in the next few days.

Sincerely,
Carol Oliver

Thanks for spreading the mycology in a totally rad way! I'll be planting some King Stropharia and inoculating some oak with Oyster today. I look forward to learning more!

Hi Peter,
I am a monitoring coordinator for a town in coastal southern Maine. I've gotten a lot of interest from local watershed protection groups, land trusts and other angencies about utilizing mycoremediation to help with fecal coliform contamination in a few local rivers and streams.

The result of these contams is the closure of clam flats which the town and it's citizens would love to see open again. You're book would be a huge help to getting this going! Thanks man!

I very much want to learn more about this subject. I wish this book was in Kindle format. But I would love to win the one being given away!

Living in eastern Iowa along the Mississippi drift-less area. What are you recommendations for my area?

Hi, Peter. I'm really interested in myco-remediation (sp?) Which fungi are better at clearing out petroleum products from the soil? Radiation? This topic just fascinates me. How long does it generally take for the little critters to do their thing?

Kimberly Wolfe

P.S. I'm crossing my fingers & wishing for a copy of the free books you're awardsing.

Wecome Peter,
How wonderful that you are sharing your fungi experiences. I hope to learn a lot. I am trying to learn and eat 2 new fungi per year. Morel season is starting, my favorite time of year!

Peter,
Is there any way to spread those lovely morel spores all over my property, given we have all the right conditions?
Is there a recipe for growing them at home?

Hello Peter and thank you for making your way thru OKC last year.

I'm writing to see if there are any species than can break down Juniperus virginiana tree chips, also known in Oklahoma as the Eastern Red Cedar. Thanks so much and look forward to reading your book.

Kevin

Peter!!

If you feel like expanding at all on those strategies for overcoming the humidity and heat challenges one faces when cultivating edible and medicinal mushrooms in arid environments (or Northern/Central California, where there's generally [but not always] a fair amount of moisture during winter months and then lonnnnnnng stretches of very little moisture/precipitation/humidity) I'd love to hear them. I'm curious what if any low-tech, outdoor-based approaches to edible mushroom cultivation in such climates you've seen working well. Related to that: any thoughts on the use of greywater or collected rainwater (i.e. in what contexts might these sources be great to use vs. what situations would they not be)? Feel free to take an answer to this broad topic in any direction that you'd like. – Thanks for your time and insights, Greg

So I ran the winner picker app in the forum software and we have 2 winners.

Robbie Asay
and
John Saltveit

Congratulations Robbie and John!

I sent you an email to ask for the email address of the person that first referred you to Permies.com. That person (if qualified) will also get a copy of the book.

Sent email and thank you! I'm very much looking forward to reading it!