Recently, I visited “The Mushroom Initiative” at Lam Tsuen, Hong Kong. It aims to educate the public about Fungi - the decomposer in this world.
I spent around 2 1/2 hours in this small scale organic farm with its' three little huts made with bamboo and used canvas.
The huts are for storing the mushrooms to grow!
This is Pleurotus ostreatus, normally called “Oyster mushrooms” - which are easy to grow during winter in Hong Kong!
There gave us a quick tour around their farm during the visit; they prepared a natural showroom to show different fungi that grow on decaying wood.
Below is the “organic mix” for the mushroom to grow in. They are the mixture of coffee ground (sponsor by Starbucks), sawdust (sponsor by wood supplier), soybean ground (sponsor by Bean curd supplier), sugar and water.
Mostly they are the side product from the food industry and we reuse / recycle them to save the resources from the environment.
They weighted the mixture in advance for us but we needed to combine the mixture by hand.
After, we put the mix into the old glass jar and gave them back for the spore growing process. They encouraged us to reuse an old glass jar since Hong Kong dose not have a proper glass recycling industry. By donating old glass jars to the collection points, they can reuse the jars and minimise the glass jars that go to landfill.
The farm workers put the spores into the “mix” in their laboratory and keep them in a storage room for a week to allow them to grow under the best environment. This is to ensure the mushroom we are growing are safe to eat.
After contributing our effort to the mushroom kit preparation, we received a free gift of the mushroom growing kit after this visit!
I decided to spend HKD $40 for 4 more extra mushroom kit to perform an experiment to show the best growing condition in our campus (I placed the kit at PE office, Reception, Caretaker office and Science prep room).
Finally, after much anticipation, I found the jars I put in the Science prep room and Reception grew very well. I think that this is because I did lots of cleaning near the sink in the Science prep room and the Reception office has got the optimum temperature for mushroom growth.
Reception Science Prep Room
Rachel Tang
