An interesting use for mushrooms

Thought I would post this video and talk a bit about it.

The video has to do with the recent oil spill in San Francisco and how they are using hair mats and oyster mushrooms to clean up the oil and convert it to clean compost.

http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,1104442331.aspx

Now, you may ask -- are these the same type of mushrooms that we sell? The answer is, surprisingly, yes. We have taken many mushroom courses and our mentor, Paul Stamets, is the person in SF that introduced the idea of using oyster mushrooms to aid in the cleanup efforts. He has done previous studies with amazing results.

Two years ago, Billy was asked to put in a mycofiltration system at Bernheim Forest to control the runoff from the parking lot into the lake. His project is working nicely.

Something the artice does not address is that after the mushrooms break down the oil, they are actually edible, though no one will ever eat them from the cleanup efforts. Oyster mushrooms are a "wood decaying" mushroom -- they are one of the first steps in Mother Nature's recycling program. You may think, well, oil is a lot different than wood, but in actuality, it is just wood and other naturally composted materials that have been put through tremendous pressures over a few million years.

Hope some of you find this interesting!

Interesting? Well that's downright fascinating. Thanks for sharing Rebecca!

I read an article recently about mustard greens that are being grown around the Chernobyl site. They will suck up alot of the radioactive toxins in the soil and can then be pulled and disposed of. They had also mentioned that this was being done with hemp plants as well.

......so would those be fluorescent greens?

We always listen to NPR in the morning before waking the kids up for school. The news piece was talking about Bernheim Forest and the visitor center. It was describing all the ways that the building had won an award for National Green Building of the Year. One of the things they mentioned was:

"Protects water quality - Wastewater from the building is treated with a renewable resource -- peat. The resulting clean water percolates through a leach field into a pond in our nursery where it is stored for irrigation. Runoff from our parking lot is cleaned of sediment, oils and other pollutants when it runs off into mulch containing fungi. The fungi break down the pollutants before the water enters the lakes below the Visitor Center."

Nice to see a local place win such a prestigous award AND know that we played a small role in it with our mushrooms. We used the spent substrate to create a berm for the runoff to filter through before entering the lake.

Here is the link http://www.bernheim.org/visitor_center.htm