Manna Garden Giant Mycelium Kits.
(Wine Cap  / King Stropharia)

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Why Manna Organic Farm: Garden Giant Mycelium Growing Kits.

Our Garden Giant mycelium is adapted to the Irish soils and climate. Here on our farm in Kerry we have been running our Garden Giant mycelium for over 5 years now. Originally our mycelium came from Fungi Perfecti the mushroom business owned by Paul Stamets in Canada. 

We trained our Manna Garden Giant Mushrooms by running the mycelium year to year allowing the mushrooms to fruit. Each year spreading spores and creating the next generation.  From the original mycelium new generations are evolving in the environment they are exposed to, helping the epigenetic ability of our Garden Giants to evolve and thrive.

We have taken multiple approaches to train our garden giant mycelium, exposing them to many challenges and the widest ecological diversity possible. Thereby ensuring our mycelium is immunologically educated. Our mycelium should adapt well to the soils and conditions in your farm or garden.

What are Garden Giant's?

Common name: Garden Giant, Wine-Cap Stropharia, Composter Mushroom, Burgundy Mushroom, King Stropharia, Stone Mushroom, Stropharia rugoso-annulat

The Garden Giant is the perfect mushroom for growing in your garden, wood or farm. The mushrooms are wine-red to burgundy in colour. 

It is very tasty when young and its an easy mushroom for all levels of cultivation.

Garden giants colonise quickly and can be easily identified. 

Once colonised it will grow for many years moving to find more food and building soil as it goes. 

Cultivating and Cooking Garden Giants with Paul Stamets

Follow this link for a more detailed Description and identification.

What are Fungi?

Mycelium is the living part of the mushrooms we see and the mushroom is the fruiting body. Only a few mycelial networks have fruiting mushrooms. The vast majority are hidden from the naked eye. But when it comes to Garden Giants you can very easily see both the mycelium and mushrooms. 

Here are 2 good links to get you started. 

Life cycle of a Mushroom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xocJ8jTriZM

PHC Film: Soil is a living organism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugaL6wsXME

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How to run / grow Garden Giants

Garden Giants will grow on a broad spectrum of mediums. Wood chips (from non pine species) being preferred but it will happily run through straw and all kinds of brash and biomass. 

Garden Giant’s mycelium can be inserted into existing piles of wood chips the fresher the better. It can  be run through cardboard in paths or just expanded out for larger areas . 

For more info / Videos on Running your Garden Giant mycelium check out our youtube Garden giant playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWtP1anZs91NSRneWRHO5DY8-ky4qjfsb

 

Benifits of Growing Garden Giant mushrooms

Garden Giants do not require substrate too be sterilised and in fact thrives in systems of high biological diversity. It works very well in wood chip paths exposed to sunlight and expands rapidly when disturbed.

Growing garden Giant  is not just about rediscovering the wonders of mushrooms for our gardens, farms and environment. It is about improving our understanding of their role in the natural world and building a new relationship with them in our farming and food systems.

It’s hard to imagine how we can Farm For Nature without working with our Fungal friends. 

They are the conductors of our biological systems. 

  • Primary digesters of the mineral, 
  • Recyclers of anything carbon based, 
  • The spiders web that holds and pulls the soil together, 
  • Transporter of water, nutrients, minerals and biology.
  • The physical communication network of nature. There was a Wood Wide Web long before a World Wide Web. 
  • Fermenters of our spirits and foods.

 

Myco Farming

Myco Farming is not simply about growing mushrooms for commercial sale. That’s more mushroom farming. You can grow mushrooms without selling them, and still enjoy the economic and ecological benefits of reintroducing a healthy myco-system into your garden, community and farms.

Garden Giants will :

  • Digest the bed rock and provide the base minerals that are currently imported at large and increasing costs. 
  • Reduce erosion and nutrient run off by letting the fungal networks hold our soil together. 
  • Fix carbon in a more stable form deep into our soils and biological systems.
  • Will create an environment where our Nitrogen is held in it most biologically stable form NH4 Ammonium
  • Myco-remediation of polluted soils and filtration of run off / effluent.  
  • Lower the pH below the level at which nitrifying bacteria can operate. More fungi means less weeds.

The list is long and the potential is huge. So lets engage the Spore drive and start running your Manna Garden Giant Mycelium today.

 

Cooking and Eating

Garden Giants are a choice edible mushroom. They can be cooked in many ways substring for other mushrooms . They are best harvested young before the caps open for most cooking but left to open if grilling. 

Preparing & Cooking Edible King Stropharia “Wine Cap” Mushrooms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEI7i6ArD0

 

https://www.facebook.com/GardenGiantIreland