#miatake

Webinar transcript ‘Cultivating medicinal mushrooms with Hossein Hekmat 26.01.2021. This webinar is a part of a series run by ‘The Roots Project’ X Kirkstall Valley Farm. The Roots Project is a fundraising, and resource platform for refugees and migrants. To learn more, support and donate check out or linktree : www.linktr.ee/therootsprojectuk

  Seren Oakley (Host): I’m Seren, I’m with Kirkstall Valley Farm, and this is Hossein.

Hossein (Speaker): Hello

S: So, Hossein is going to be our mushroom man for today. I wanted to start off by – I don’t know if any of you know Merlin Sheldrake is, but there’s a really nice bit in his book that I think could intro quite nicely into what you’re going to tell us about mushrooms. So, it says “Mushrooms provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the way we think, feel and behave. Yet they spend their lives largely hidden from view and more that 90% of their species remain undocumented. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.’ So, Hossein can you tell us, what are mushrooms? Firstly, before we start, and what you do in relation to them maybe.

H: I can. I discovered mushroom cultivation. Well, I’ve come across adaptogens a few years ago in pursuit of holistic health. Trying to figure out why conventional medicine doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. So, I mean one of the biggest influences on me was Paul Stamets. You may or may not have heard. Hopefully. He’s a person who really embodies something that I’ve always wanted the world to progress to which is the spirituality of science and the science of spirituality. The understanding that the holistic approach to the planet in terms of how we look at ourselves in terms of individuals. The way mycelium works both metaphorically and literally teaches you that the planet is one, the universe is one. But they’re actually connected in scientific ways. Mushrooms have networks underground caused mycelium. They spread out. They have a symbiosis with the ecosystem that they’re in bringing nutrients to things that need it, trading nutrients with plants, bringing nutrients from the mother tree to like a seedling. They seem to have been around a lot longer that mammals. A few million years ago, if I’m correct they helped bring plant life from the oceans to the land. Most people don’t realise humans are more closely related to mushrooms than plant life. Because they breathe in oxygen and they breathe out carbon dioxide. So, when I kind of got into understanding natural, more herbal solutions to human issues. Adaptogens became a big thing.

S: What is an adaptogen, for people who don’t know?

H: There’s different ways to explain it, it’s a natural holistic product, that has a lot of benefits for your body, but also tells your body how to improve itself instead of giving your body what it wants. It’s like a key to a programme that it unlocks a process in your body where things improve. Typically, adaptogens are things tat tell your body how to adapt to stress, so often it’s adapting to physical or emotional stressful environments. Or improving your ability in those ways. A couple we’ve mentioned in podcasts before, for example, Ashwagandha; is a nootropic. It improves cognitive function. It has benefits for thinking and cognition. It has some prospects in that regards for things like Alzheimer’s and dementia. It regulates hormones like testosterone naturally, down regulates cortisol the stress hormone. These things have multiple properties. If you follow the trail of natural adaptogens you’ll inevitably get to mushrooms, to fungi.

S: What are some of the first adaptogenic mushrooms you got into? And what do they do?

H: So, Lions mane is one of them, you’re familiar with as well. It seems to have the properties that ashwagandha has for the brain, but a lot more pronounced. I’ve got some notes here actually. There’s a lot of adaptogenic mushrooms that I’m quite into and most of which I’m growing but there’s a couple more you need a bit more time to do so. Lions manes a good one you can grow at home. It’s got a lot of benefits, and helps with ulcers, and tumours. It’s an anti-inflammatory as well. There’s a study from 1987 showing it’s beneficial for throat cancers, and gastric cancers. A few other benefits are that it’s one of two types of mushrooms that causes neurogenesis. It helps the neurons regrow and repair. Which is something you can’t really find in the synthetic world. It’s actually quite rare anyway. That’s a really good adaptogenic property of lion’s mane, the neurogenesis. Specifically, the outer part of the neuron, it helps that part grow, which could be damaged by, you name it PTSD, Stress, Depression, all sorts of issues. Again, it highlights a perspective of a human made issue, resolved or addressed with a fungus. As we know fungi adapt to the environment and try to help it balance out. So, on a physiological scale, they have a lot of potential to help us, because we are basically the planet, conscious. Just like the fungi we’re not really separate from them. But there’s this illusion that we are. There are a few other benefits to thee mushrooms that we’ll talk about today. They all have a common theme between them, they all have a massive boost to your immune system, they seem to be very effective for a few cancers. And they all have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body as well. A lot of medicines that help your immune system, caution needs to be taken with them, because they can cause inflammation to your immune system. Most thee mushrooms don’t seem to do that. They have what exerts call, immune-regulatory properties so hat means they regulate they boost it, but they have an anti-inflammatory effect as well, so people with an auto-immune disease should look into a few of these.

S: Other than neuro-performance, are there any that really benefit with physical performance that you’d recommend to people?

H: Yeah, to be honest! Quite a few of them have positive effects on your body, you mean like physical benefits, you mean like exercise and physical performance? Cordyceps are a good one, you might have heard of, in the wild they grow on insects. They’re a little more difficult to cultivate at home because of that. There’s a couple of strains. There’s a very famous Tibetan one. There’s a lot of benefits to taking them the list is massive. But again, like with all the other adaptogenic mushrooms, they have a benefit for immune system, some studies show anticancer properties, and anti-inflammatory properties, but with cordyceps, studies show - for example - they all seem to have a speciality property on top – (with cordyceps) is athletic performance. They oxygenate your blood, I think it’s to do with how they affect your blood, they have a life prolonging effect as well. These are studies that are still going through, mainly because there’s no profit big pharma kind of studies for them. But cordyceps is something I would recommend to someone who would benefit from, if they’re suffering from anything, a disease or an issue that slows you down or you require, or you require extra athletic performance. Just generally we need to start a culture.

I used to be in the gym industry, the fitness industry, you observe a lot of artificial profit-based solutions. People are addicted to getting bigger and more muscular. You reach a certain age, and it’s a given in the personal training scene where, they reach a certain age, they all start taking testosterone. Whether on their own, or they go to their doctors and ask them to top them up. But if you have a bit of knowledge, you can have your performance naturally improved adaptogens do that, they tell your body to give it what it needs. Cordyceps have those benefits, they seem to create a lot of circulation, they improve athletic performance to the point, this would have to be quoted properly, but a bunch of athletic teams were accused to be doping because they were taking cordyceps, cordyceps have some anecdotal stories of athletics being affected quite positively to the point that people think they’re doping. So cordyceps would be a really good one. For anyone wit hypothyroidism that would help a lot with as well

S: Before we move on to the process, because I’ll show the video after this, how did you move from the supplements and eating mushrooms to the decision to start growing mushrooms yourself

H: I think there was a lot of spare time during lockdown. I’m self-employed effectively, with more focus on sports massage therapy, but that’s not really happening. So, you have a lot of time to learn thigs and do things during lockdown, so it just felt like it was meant to be. I was already following that path of holistic and natural medicines. You get to a point where you do your own research and things and you realise what we’re taught, and what the reality of what can help us is based on profit. It’s based on funnelling us into a system, where if you feel like you want to help people improve their lives, health, improve their mental health, you’d be channelled into a degree that ignores a lot of things, the university system is funded by a capitalist system that wants you to just, kind of go into an industry, and make profit, make money. So, decades of watching medicine fail, and realising this more and more. I remember seeing years ago the negative effects of pharmaceutical on myself, my family members, people I care about, so it kind of woke me up to the anti-pharma stuff that everyone’s now picked up on, but still has very little power against. That’s the drive, the drive comes from realising pharmaceuticals are not here to help us, they’re here to make to profit. When you live in a world where everyone’s taking testosterone when they turn 25, and you pop an ashwagandha and a cordyceps, and you know. You’ve done the research and you see the people behind it, you see like Paul Stamets, or Merlin Sheldrake, these absolute legends who want to make the world a better place, so we can make the planet a better place with less suffering, so you know the planet will survive a lot better, that’s the drive that makes you want to do your own research. I’m not talking about some paranoid conspiracy talk; I’m talking about the basis of what science there is out there. Why it’s not prominent, why it’s not on the news, why Phizer, a company with evil, evil, evil track record, where they’ve caused deaths in children in places in Africa, and just shell out millions and millions in dollars, to make up for it’ company like that is trusted and accepted as a solution to COVID-19. Which we know is making endless profit for the billionaires that really aren’t here for our benefit in the first place. When that’s accepted, I don’t think it’s going to get that many results, and when people don’t really know what medicinal mushrooms are, that’s what I want to tilt the balance of.

When you get the knowledge, and you get into mycology and understand these breakthrough mycologists and what they’re doing, you understand that one or two of these mushrooms, is enough to covid proof you. With a healthy lifestyle, where you’re eating the right foods, making sure you’re getting your zinc, your vitamins, there’s nothing that comes close to enabling your body to do what it’s meant to do. With the help of you body and the earth extended, because that is your body, that’s the earth. So, we live in a world where people are conditioned to trust medicines that are no good for anyone apart from the people making profit, and often they’ll cause adverse effects. We need to change that because those drugs aren’t good for your physical health or mental health. But what I’ve found is that adaptogens, fungal based or not, counter the negative effects of pharmaceuticals.

S: Let’s go through to the process I think, when we do it would you rather, we go through the pictures, and explain what’s going on in the pictures first or go through the video and then talk about that at the end?

H: Lets go for the pictures and talk a little bit about that first.

S: Cool, I’m going to share my screen with everyone, yeah.  So, what is happening in this picture?

H: That’s a aby lions mane growing out. Lion’s mane has, as the name suggests kind of like a beard, or some people say like a brain, or some people say like a fluffy pom pom. Most would agree it’s a pom pom mushroom. The good thing about lion’s mane is it’s also a gourmet mushroom. Like it really tastes nice, fry it up with some garlic, some sesame seeds. The aim is to really be growing enough to eat it really as opposed to buying or taking the extract. So, the process with most medicinal mushrooms is, and we’ll go through more later is you need – it’s micro biology – you want to kind of, if you’re using spores, you want them to germinate, they need to be in a completely sterile environment, no other bacteria, or other fungi are there. Because they’ll compete with them, and in a lot of cases, if it’s a predatory fungus, they’ll kind of take over. So, there’s a lot of sterilisation.

With this Lion’s mane I kind of grew it out. On grains, so what I did was bought liquid culture. I ordered liquid culture from gourmetmushrooms.co.uk they’re based in Leeds. They’re a really good mushroom supply company. The person who runs it, is a big fan paul stamets. I’ve got his book here. This is the main for of inspiration, and thing that I learn from. Apparently, this lions mane that I’m growing, is a Paul Stamets strain. So, he met Stamets, and he kept it and he’s kept it for a while. What you need to get is liquid culture, or spores in grans that have been prepared. Typically you hydrate the grains, s you soak them for 24 hours, then you simmer or boil them for a bit, so they absorb moisture, but then you drain them so they’re dry on the outside. Close to when you’re ready to eat them, if you were to eat them really. It’s a process of putting them in jars, carefully prepared jars, you’d sterilise them. So what most people do is use a pressure cooker, between an hour or two of 15 psi, it kills all the spores or anything competing in the grains. Then after that it’s a case of finding an environment, or like a still air environment, to put your liquid culture, which is the mycelium in a liquid form, or your spores which have germinated, into the grains to incubate for a while. With Lion’s Mane for example for a few weeks, or even a couple months if it’s a big bag. Often with gourmet medicinal mushrooms, the incubation temp is higher than fruiting temp so when you’re ready to fruit you lower the temperature. Another thing that mushrooms really like is humidity, I use a fogger here. But anything to make humidity around it. I’ve got bit of a Lion’s Mane culture here to show actually. This is something I’ve used already, so I don’t mind opening up and exposing it to air because that would usually contaminate it. The mycelium of lion’s mane is a bit whisky; it doesn’t look that strong. It’s a bit sporadic. Some mycologists might see this and think of is that contaminations. But it’s just the way lion’s mane grows it’s a it sporadic. This is what I use instead of a petri dish, you can sterilise and use these cups. You can put a little bit of this into the grains, to inoculate it, or you can make liquid culture and put that in. So that’s Lion’s Mane. It’s gorgeous and it tastes beautiful.

S: I’ll go to the next image. What are these?

H: So, these are bags, sawdust bags. I was in the process of filling them up. You can grow a lot of these medicinal mushrooms on sawdust. Supplemented sawdust. In fact, that’s the main method. Grains are a way to get the mycelium in something high nutrient so it’s strong. So, you can put the grains to sawdust as well. Usually, you hydrate it to something known as field capacity. What it is is I get a formula from the supplier. With this beechwood sawdust, for every 1kg of beechwood sawdust you put three Litres of water, and that should hydrate sufficiently, for the mycelium to grow out on and the mushrooms to grow. I put it in a spawn bag or a grow bag, and these are autoclave-able, so you can kind of have them at about 15-16 psi which is about 120 degrees centigrade, and they’ll sterilise what’s inside them. So similar to what we said with the grain jars. You put these in a pressure cooker, sterilise them, and once they’re out they’re ready to inoculate. Then you can the liquid culture in there, you can put a piece of mycelium in there from agar or petri dish. Some people do spore syringes in there. It just creates a potential for variations in genetics.

 S: and what is that?

H: This is liquid culture, I was talking about, an if I’m not mistaken that’s enoki in a jar. It’s a medium where the mycelium can grow in water. So, you do the same kind of process, if you want to create liquid culture, from spores. For example, you could get spores of a mushroom from a vendor, they usually come in a syringe, and you inject it into the medium. The medium is usually a small percentage of carbohydrate, 4% by weight. I’ve used light malt extract here, which is another way of having a nutrient broth. I put 1g to 600ml. Then you put it in the pressure cooker, because tit’s liquid it only needs to be sterilised for 25 minutes. Once it’s sterile you can kind of inject it or put a piece of mycelium in there as well again it has to be in a sterile environment. Usually like a still air box, something I can go into later, or another episode. Where you can open the top and be confident nothing else can get in. Then you spin it out, you spin it out everyday for a week or two. As you can see the bits of mycelium grow. Then the bits in between, are just like the water medium.

I think there’s another one here as well you can show. Maitake, or yeah hen of the woods… Yeah, so the last one was Maitake, this is Enoki. It’s actually looking a bit healthier than the other one. When you spin it round it breaks up. It’s actually got a jelly fish like cloud. I love it it’s beautiful. That’s healthy-looking mycelium, from enoki. Basically, I bought the spores, so it was already in a syringe ready to spread, and then I expanded it to liquid culture. That’s the benefit of liquid culture you can just keep expanding it for a while. Then have more of it.

S: We’ll go back to this picture as well.

H: This is a very interesting thing, so those sawdust blocks that we showed earlier. This is a shitake fruiting block that’s already. I can kind of go into the benefits of shitake as well, because its one of the tastiest gourmet medicinal mushrooms so it’s like a very potent anti-cancer mushroom as well. So, I’ll go into polysaccharides as well. So, the way mushrooms work and their adaptogenic properties, is in some of the compounds called polysaccharides, and there’s a type of those called beta-glutens. These are basically very complex carbohydrates, that can work with and bind proteins, and the complexities are like a key that work and unlock something in your body, to create an adaptogenic effect. So, a few studies I’m looking at here, there’s a study from japan that show it has anti-cancerous properties, there’s a study from 1978 from a scientist called Shiharo, where it almost completely performed regression of many solid tumours that were looked at. There’s a poly saccharide called KS2 in it for example, it’s a powerful anti-carcinogen, anti-tumour. Again, it’s an adaptogenic compound that binds to proteins, it tells your immune system what to do, how to deal with it better. Another notable benefit of Shitake for example, is its immunity boosting properties there’s a study from 1993 that shows it can reverse the effects of herpes, it can slow down HIV, and has immunity boosting effects in it as well. There’s another study Seren, that you might like, that says, fermented shitake is a lot more effective. They say fermented shitake is even better.

So, this is a shitake block. Even compared to other medicinal mushrooms, it does take a bit longer to mature, and most mycelium has a white-ish colour and so does shitake. But after a while it goes brown, and that’s when you know it’s ready to fruit. So, this is a shitake fruiting block, that we’ve actually harvested, and eaten, it’s been put out for it’s second flush because shitake usually does a couple of flushes, it just takes ages. It’s worth it though.

S: Yeah, I’ll play the video now. I guess if you want to just talk over it because it’s quite fast moving but we can always watch it twice through if people want. Hossein if you want me to stop the video at any point just let me know because it is in sections so we can just stop it.

H: Sure, Sure. I’m ready.

S: So, this is the cloning from shop bought mushrooms.

H: So, this is a still air box, I was referring to earlier. You clean it up first, wipe it down with alcohol. 70% plus iso-propel alcohol, or Dettol or both. Then you wait half hour for everything to settle in there. Anything you need to work with, you put in there. So, I’m working with a scalpel, exacto-knife in there. Cloning’s a really good way to grow mushrooms, you don’t necessarily need to buy culture from anywhere. You can clone from the wild or even super market, as we’re doing here. So, this is shimeji mushroom. Another mushroom that has a lot of benefits, similar to Enoki, which I’m growing at home as well. The process is you find the healthiest happiest one, amongst some healthier friends as well, that’s like a healthy cluster. You find the best one.

I’ve been a bit extra careful here and sprayed it down as well so it’s clean on the outside. A lot of people don’t do that. You spread it apart and you get a little bit of the flesh, ad that’s all you need. You put the flesh in a petri dish, that you’ve got the medium on already, similar to a liquid culture the medium, it’s like a gelatinous version. You watch it grow out and as it grows out, over the next few days, weeks. It takes a couple weeks to grow properly then you can observe it see if it’s healthy, the healthiest strand that’s kind of coming out from where you’ve planted it, you can watch that grow out. You can keep doing that until you’ve got a healthy culture. That’s also how you eliminate contaminants, especially if you clone from the wild. You’re going to have other fungi contaminants competing, likely to be with the mushrooms. Same with shop bought, you can’t guarantee it being sterile. Here we can see I’m opening up the flesh of the mushroom, so I can get into the middle, cause in the middle it’s less likely to have contaminants, even if it does have contaminants, it’s going to have less of. I’m flame sterilising the head of my needle here. This is all happening in a still air box, that’s why it’s a bit blurry, it’s PVC.

I’m taking a little bit of the flesh from the centre of the mushroom, to minimise the risk of contaminants being on it. I’ve got a little piece there, just putting it into the middle. Once you get used to this kind of stuff, I want to get to a place where everyone’s doing this kind of stuff, like it’s plant work. Like Myco-phobia is the reason none of us are doing this kind of thing. Everyone could do it. Everyone should do it.

So I’ve got a fogger here, which creates a moist environment for mushrooms. That’s the top of a bottle which I’m growing Enoki mushrooms on Enoki’s have a different way to fruit they cultivate and fruit to grow short and thin. So, I used a method to make them grow long and thin by reducing carbon dioxide levels.

This is Hen of the Wood, maitake. Another mushroom with loads of medicinal benefits, similar to maitake. So, this study from 93, from a guy called Chan-young; reduces tumor mass. I’ll go into Maitake a little bit as well. The thing with maitake is as well, again we’re talking about man made problems. I don’t know too much detail about hormone effecting pharmaceuticals, but I have observed a lot of common issues that happen in modern society that happen with men and women. I’ll go into what Enoki does in terms of certain tumours or cancers.  As well as having all the benefits we’ve mentioned, is a very effective treatment for treatment resistant malaria. So that is something to look into. A natural treatment to help malaria. Also, there’s a study that shows – this is in the Paul Stamets book. 76% improvement in pregnancy rates, in women who were not ovulating due to PCOS. So, PCOS, 76% improvement rate in pregnancies, for women who were not ovulating before. Now, you could say – how did that happen in the first place? I don’t know. But pharmaceuticals in general are a massive part of why we have that issue in the first place. I’ll go into Enoki as well, and how that affects men.

Yeah – so these are three shitake clone plates that I’ve grown before. So, when I grew out the shitake, I took a piece of the flesh from an area that had nice big mushrooms around it. I think in the video I’m trying to show what it looks like, but I’ve got a sample here that I can show. It’s gorgeous, it puts a smile on my face. The fractal-ness of it. I’ll show you now, if you can see. So that’s the mycelium of shitake, that I’ve used before ad gown out. I’ve kind of put some of it in the fridge. It’s gorgeous. It has similarities with so many things in nature, it looks like an eye, or a mushroom top.

Here is another process, where I’m taking a bit from one petri dish and putting it into another. Tis is like the clean up process where you take the healthier process, and moving it to let that grow out. So, once you get to your mushroom lock that your growing, you’ve got the healthiest part. The most contaminant free. It kind of becomes, similar to like a whisky where people say single malt is better than multi malt. Especially when you’re doing this stuff, the spores will have multiple genetic so you’ll want to isolate the healthiest genetics and transfer that.

That’s a T2 transfer, that means I’ve transferred it twice. From the original petri dish onto the second petri dish.

Sweet.

S: There’s a question in the chat, we could answer that quickly if you can see it, it’s from Goldi. It says ‘I live outdoors most of the time, what advice do you have for growing mushrooms in unpredictable environments? Like it can get warm and cold quickly and sterilising things can be difficult.

H:

You can kind of sterilise things without a pressure cooker. You can steam sterilise things, but you’d have to do that for a good 24 hours, to really – endo spores are an issue. Spores are actually really cheeky. They can survive a lot. They hide in the middle of grains like ‘Don’t tell anyone and I’ll like come out later, and BOOM’ they take over the grow so, predatorial fungus, or bacterial spores. They have this defence mechanism, where they can deal with a lot more heat and pressure. When that heat and pressures gone, then they start evolving, and the DNA changes and they start becoming the fungus. If you don’t mind putting something on the hob for 24hrs, you can do it.

In terms of unpredictable environments, you would have to incubate at warmer temperatures, that’s just a given. Some of these you could incubate at as low as 15 degrees, these medicinal mushrooms. I would recommend using strong aggressive strains. Oyster mushrooms are a very tasty gourmet mushroom. I plan to grow some; they seem to be to be fastest most aggressive strain. Some of them are really fine with cold environments. You’d have to look at incubation as well, because incubation is always warmer. All these mushrooms will grow in the cold. All of them will fruit in the cold. It’s just whether they will incubate. So you want to normalise the temperature but I would also look at your local environment specifically, and see what advice there is online also. I’m coming from the perspective of someone who’s like learned this stuff, got into this stuff. But I’m definitely not a specialist. Or a mycologist. An amateur enthusiast. Which we should all be, cause that’s the whole point of the culture, is to normalise it; where we have mushroom grow kits in the kitchen. Some people even put them in the bathroom, once the mycelium has taken over the substrate and it’s quite strong, you don’t really have to worry about contaminations as much as you would. Especially a clean bathroom would create a good steam level for it. For humidity I’d look at Oyster mushrooms. They do have some medicinal benefits. Some Oyster mushrooms have closed to these [mentioned mushrooms] kind of benefits.

 S:  We’ll open it up as well, if anyone else wants to unmute themselves or type any questions in the chat

H:  Robbie?

Robbie:  Thank you. Lots of good information there. I’ve been getting into medicinal mushrooms. Mainly foraged ones that are picked out and about. Turkey Tails and Birch Polypore’s and things like that.

Growing medicinal mushrooms is something I want to get into. So I was kinda thinking like it seems like a bit of a mine field of so much stuff, but what do you need to start a simple grow? I mainly wanna grow Lion’s Mane

 H:

So what i would recommend is, if you want to get into it quickly.  There’s a couple of methods. I started with kits. I got a Lion’s Mane grow kit and from that I cloned  instead of getting the culture.

If you want to start from a base level and growing them regularly, I would recommend getting a good liquid culture from a vendor. There’s no guarantee that they're completely sterile but pretty much [are]. They use a Flow Hood which is this thing which blows sterile air where they can work on and they cost £100s.  I use the Gourmetmushrooms.co.uk Liquid Cultures and they worked absolutely fine.

Liquid cultures are better than a spore syringe, because someone's already isolated the good spore genetics and hopefully taken away any contamination from it.

So if you are going to start growing, you can buy the liquid culture, then in terms of equipment, I use jars.

I’m an audio/kinaesthetic/ visual learner. I love books as well when there’s a passion and enthusiasm but I’ve learned so much from university of YouTube.

R: yeah

H:

Because there’s a lot of talented enthusiastic mycologists in the UK and in America to learn from, that I’ve kind of become obsessed with [watching]

Basically you can use jars and there’s a process where you do ‘Culture’ to ‘Grain’ to ‘Substrate’ or you can grow straight from culture to substrate. All these gourmet/medicinal ones grow on woodchips or supplemented wood because they’re used to growing on or near trees.

The other category of medicinal mushrooms which were seeing a revolution in, grow on different substrates. For example , the Psilocybin based ones are part of a mental health revolution. I think its an example of how we’re going to make the world a better place. They don’t grow on woodchips, but they're definitely powerful medicinal mushrooms. But the rest of them [medicinal mushrooms] grow on supplemented woodchips.

 The only drawback t large scale mushroom growing is the big plastic grow bags, but the good thing is it’s the same industry that’s finding the solution to the plastic problem. I don’t know if you’ve heard, there’s a lot of beautiful intelligent people working on engineering one of the 50 species of fungus that eat plastic. But you can get grow bags with filtered air patches that don’t let bacteria in. You can get about 20/30 fairly large ones for about £15-£20. I get sawdust and supplement it between 10-15% with organic wheat bran. That kind of gives it the equivalent [nutrition] of what a tree would have , then you bring it to “Field capacity” with water, put it in a pressure cooker at 15psi for 2  hours.  15psi pressure cookers are very very difficult to get in the UK, because in Europe and the UK they're usually 10psi, which you can experiment with. There’s the Idea that you just do it for 2/3 times as long [as the 15psi would] it will work.

You can steam sterilise as well. You put the big blocks in a pan, but you’d have to boil it for 24 hours so you’d have to figure out having to keep boiling the kettle and adding more water in.

If you see it as process that you’re passionate about, it’s a wonderful thing and if you eventually save up and get a pressure cooker , the most common one that everyone uses is a ‘Presto 23 quart’, it’s like a 21.5Litre pressure cooker with a pressure gauge. In America it’s cheap, like $100 but for us to buy it’s about £130 plus import duties etc on eBay. If you can save up its worth it, otherwise if you can find a way to steam for 24 hours, then you can get your substrates prepared.

Otherwise, I think we can segway this [mushroom cultivation] culture with grow kit culture. Depends how deep you wanna go. If you wanna be someone provides the grow kits as well or someone who provides information on growing or just a mushroom product user, either way that’s welcome from the mushroom world.

With grow kits, they send you it already covered in mycelium, ready to fruit. That’s when they send you it. They're usually not that expensive. The £1 Shiitake block £7 and I think they had one over 2kg at £15, something like that.

S:  I’ve posted the website that you use

H: Bless bless

Another thing I’d say is do what you’re doing now. Ask ask ask. I nagged so many people with so many questions. I bought 2 Shiitake blocks and get texting him about what to do J

R:  Cool, that sounds good. Ill definitely do a bit more reading on it too. What was that book you had, also?

 H:  This is definitely something I’d recommend. My friend lent me it but I’d buy it a 1000 times:

Growing Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms – Paul Stamets

R:  oh Paul Stamets, cool

H:  yeah , this isa good reference book. The only thing it doesn’t include is Cordyceps but its absolutely amazing. For indoor and outdoor and medicinal mushrooms.

Does anyone have any more questions ?

I did wanna mention Enoki. They all have these common benefits: on of the polysaccharides in Enoki is called Flamulin. From a study done by a scientist called Ying, from China in 1987 that shows 80-100% effectiveness for treatment of Sarcomas and Carcinomas

They have unusually low cancer rates in areas where these mushrooms are consumed in Japan. Studies of anti cancer properties go back as 1968 and another from 1990. Alot of these studies were initiated such a long time ago that you wonder how the worlds, where the information is geared towards making more profit.

Another property of Enoki I wanted to bring up is it shows fantastic results for prostate cancer as a speciality. Enoki is good for enlarged/tumourus prostates. It’s kinda cool because you see these specialities they do as well as the common benefits among them. Like for example with Maitake and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

I did wanna mention a couple more mushrooms whilst I’m here. So these are all mushrooms I’m growing or intend to grow:

There’s a couple more mushrooms that are like wood conk style. There physically a bit more dense.

These are medicinal but not really gourmet. So you either do extracts or teas or tinctures.

This might be most famous of medicinal mushrooms you may have heard of so this is Reishi.

There’s loads of studies showing disease resistance, [life] longevity and improvements of thyroid issues. Cancer fighting properties. Been used as an ant cancer medicine in asia for 100s of years. Includes very complex Beta Glucans. Some species have 40% Beta Glucan content - really high adaptogenic content. Ive noted a bunch of things for example the way it stimulates T – Cell production, immune system boosting while maintaining anti inflammatory effects on the immune system.

Good for blood health. A study from 1989 mentions it regulates blood sugar and lipids. Another study from China (Yung 1995) showing significant reduction in lung cancer cells. A study from Japan shows its toxicity to cancer cells  (Mizushima 1998)

Reishi has show significant reduction in HIV cell production in humans from a study in 1994 and there’s another study proving it fights DNA damage.

 Reishis’ all over the world as well in different forms. Ive not seen too much of it in the local, local areas like Meanwood/Woodhouse but what I have seen is Turkey Tail.

Turkey Tail’s everywhere; if you do some research you’ll see you’ll find it in warm countries, cold countries in different variations. you can find it in Woodhouse ridge before all the critters get them, they're quite pretty.

There’s a study from (Nakazuto 1997) (Sugimeshi 1997, 1994). Im mentioning the studies so people can reference it and also so it’s not some generic advice you may hear from people about things. These are serious studies.

Paul Stamet’s mentioned, combined with chemotherapy, it increases the survival rate of many cancers with the help of its main Polysaccharide known as PSK . A study (Kobiashi 1995) shows it reduces cancer metastasis. It’s also a powerful anti free radical. There’s another Polysaccharide in it called PSP which inhibits HIV production. So that’s 3 different [medicinal] mushrooms that fight HIV.

Othere Polysaccharides in it include RPSB. They all have a bunch of benefits including immunomudulation and anti inflammatory benefits.

Studies show Turkey Tail has a great effect for treating Leukaemia and it has strong anti microbial properties.

So these are really really good Covid time mushrooms.

There’s an anecdotal story about Turkey Tail too. If like me you follow Paul Stamets you may know about the story of his mother he mentions in his lectures where his mother in here 80’s called him one day... yeah Catherine, do know this story?

Catherine:   Nods

H:  Yeah so she had incredibly enlarged breast. Doctor gave her very little time [stage 4 breast cancer] her doctor or friend mentioned a study about Turkey Tail and she mentioned her son Paul makes Turkey Tail. Paul gave her 8 Turkey Tail extract capsules a day (I have 2  day) and he famously in his lectures brings his mum on stage 10/15 years later, well into her 90’s alive and healthy J.

Sorry my housemates just cooking :D

Has anyone else got any questions of advice or anything you want to tell me or I’ve missed. Any Mycologies here? ... sweet

Seren: I think we’ve had quite a lot of things for us to think about.

 Thanks, let’s wrap things up here. Thanks a lot for teaching us all this . are there any websites or resources you’d like to suggest before we go. Ill post the links to the roots stuff as well in the chat for next week.

Hossein: I want to thank Seren. You’re a legend. You see magic all around the world and you bring it to light and you inspire people to do what they might be a little shy to do. Thanks so much because you bring so much light to the world. Eternally love you

Seren:  And you man

H: sorry what did you ask again?

S: Links

H: oh yeah, for learning I use YouTube or these peoples websites. So as you get into mushrooms you’ll hear Fresh Cap Mushrooms alot. They have a website and are on Youtube. They're a really informative Gourmet/Medicinal Mushroom group. They have a lot of videos where they show you indoor and outdoor cultivation.  All the stuff that I’ve mentioned about the benefits, they go into a little more detail. In their videos they have this massive massive Reishi mushroom the size of a table and its beautiful. So that’s FreshCapMushrooms

There’s ‘Fresh From the Farm Fungi’ as well. They're a specialist mycology centre. They show you how to grow. I’m following them now and they're growing and experimenting with Cordyceps at the moment. They're still in the experimental stage where people are trying to work out the best way to grow them.  What we grow is Crodyceps Militaris, which is easier to grow and more potent than the rare Himalayan Cordyceps Sinensis that only grows in insects. If you ever see an orange twigletty thing sticking out of grass in fields, that’s Cordyceps, pick it and try to clone it from the wild.

 There’s a few mycology places and websites based in the UK as well but I forget. They usually have the word mushroom or fungi in their names

I would definitely recommend Paul Stamets. He’s got his own website too. For more specialised people, he’s got links to the studies he’s done and part of or any studies pertaining to mushrooms helping the world.

Mushroom Harvest! A quick hike yielded two species of tender Fall Oysters, plus Hens and aborted Honeys. And if that wasn't enough, there's my Nameko to add to this Fall abundance. What to do?!..