mushrooms, anyone?

Well, first of all I guess it is a good thing that I "blog without obligation" otherwise the guilt for not posting for seven months (to the day, I might add) would be immense!

Last week we made our weekly trek to a local farmer's market that we have been going to all summer. I was talking to Cyrus, our 'Mushroom Guy' and asked where I could get my mushrooms after the market closed for the season. He told me about the winter market, which is a great start, and then told me as we were regular customers, he gave me one of the mounds of dirt (?) he had under his table. He said, "Take this home and find a spot that gets indirect light and is between 18-20 degrees celsius. The shitake mushrooms will start to grow and when they do, remove the plastic and put a large plastic bag over the mound like a tent.

We thought, how well can this work...

Well, it appears we found the perfect spot. One week later, this is what we have! It's crazy...the mushrooms seem to double in size every day.

We took our pictures back to the market yesterday to show Cyrus and he said we had indeed found the right spot with the right temperature and most importantly, the right amount of light, which is why they are growing so big.

He told us what a mature mushroom should look like and that we could harvest them at any time. We are curious as to how big they will get, so we are going to give them a bit more time before we harvest, but it's pretty cool...don't you think?