I might as well come clean now. Sweeping up autumn leaves is one of the few things about gardening that I really don’t enjoy. The slipping on soggy foliage, the long monotony, those blinking sacks that never stay open, it feels too much like outdoor housework to me. Especially as it inevitably ends in a gust of wind blowing away every neat pile just before you get them to the compost heap. However, there is a silver lining to falling leaves.
Not only do they turn into the world’s best soil improver when composted down, but during this process they also make the perfect growing media for fancy oyster mushrooms. In fact, seeding these super easy-to-grow fungi through your compost heap can actually speed up the whole process, giving you faster results, plus some tasty homegrown harvests, too.
For people like me, with small gardens, this speedier turnaround can be really handy as with only a tiny area dedicated to composting there can be a tendency to generate waste faster than a small heap can break it down. Just as well then that if you fancy trying your hand at starting your own little mushroom colony, now is as good a time as any.
Spores for oyster mushrooms are widely sold – both online for as little as a couple of quid, and in the seed section of larger garden centres all over the country. You’ll find there are several types of oyster mushrooms on sale in shades of yellow, pink and grey. For outdoor growing the traditional grey one is reputedly the hardiest, followed by the yellow.
The pretty pink ones hail from warmer climates, preferring temperatures closer to 20C, however the beauty of growing them on compost heaps instead of log piles or in sacks of sawdust is that the heat naturally generated by the microbes breaking it down means that even when bitterly cold outside the interior of larger heaps can be significantly warmer – in fact literally steaming. So experimenting with the pink strain might be worth a gamble considering their relatively modest price.
Pick a mild spell when no imminent hard frost is forecast and make a few small wells in the surface of your compost heap, about 15cm deep. Sprinkle the spawn or tip a few dowels into each well and cover over with freshly gathered fallen leaves. Water the whole thing well. Activated by the warmth and moisture of the heap your nascent colony should soon start devouring the leaves and twigs, spreading their white root-like mycelia throughout the pile.
They can start fruiting within as little as three months if sown right now. And provided you keep the heap regularly topped up with leaf litter and watered in the dry spells, once established they can carry on for years at a time.
Email James at james.wong@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @Botanygeek
