Shiitakes are a great way to eat your medicine.
Shiitake mushrooms have proven to be an all around healthy food. The medicinal properties are almost as good as the Reishi, which is tasty but difficult to eat in volume.Western society has finally realized what eastern society has known for centuries. Mushrooms are good for you and have incredible healing properties for our ailing society.
It only stands to reason that you would want the shiitake to be organic. There is only a few places in the country to purchase them. Garden City Fungi, outside of Missoula, grows and sells organic mushrooms. The owners are serious about organics and I trust them for a safe local product. Stamets, of Fungi Perfecti, is a champion of the organic mushroom movement, and I trust them for mailorder.
Lincs to both websites are on the Home Page. They are both certified organic. Support responsible growers and get to know your farmers.
I was thinking about growing these myself but afraid they wouldn’t grow in Montana. Maybe oysters would be a better choice. Your thoughts?
I think it would be difficult to grow shiitakes on logs or stumps with the cold winters we have. Mushroom kits however would be a good way to go. Shiitakes growing on sawdust grow much faster. Kits at Garden City Fungi and fungi perfecti (links on home page)start flushing in 2 to 4 weeks and flush for months. A person could then experiment with the spent kit on stumps or logs. Once you got the hang of growing them you could buy spawn and inoculate a bunch of your own “kits” and flush them out before winter.
Grow oysters too, they have good medicinal values and are aggressive and easy to grow on logs and stumps.A variety of mushrooms insures you get all of the food value you need and helps in case of crop failure. I am going to try some kits this year and will report on them.