Clinton Township Newsletter

2 4 a u g u s t 2 0 2 1 W W W . C L I N T O N T W P N E W S L E T T E R . C O M Clinton Three Q with Rachel Sprague is an interview column featuring people and organizations around Clinton Township. This month, as the Garden State lived up to its name with wonderful summer produce, Clinton Three Q spoke to a really fun guy about his fungi! Alex Ireland, along with his wife Alison Grantham, owns the small business Radiant Mushrooms; you'll see their shingle sign and front-porch shop just past the Annandale Deli. C3Q: Alex, you describe yourself as a mega mushroom enthusiast! How did you get started with growing and selling mushrooms? Alex: I am an ecologist, so I am really interested in how forests and landscapes work. I love thinking about how mushrooms can be environmental solutions to reclaim ecosystems, and how we can use mushroom compost to improve soil. I love foraging and read field guides for fun. When my daughter was four, we grew a shiitake block together as a science experiment, and it was so much fun to watch them grow and take care of them, and the shiitakes were delicious! That spurred us on the first time, and from there, we asked, 'What else can we do?' I did research to find the easiest mushrooms to start with. Our house had previously been a salon, and the backyard was a weed forest. As ecologists, we set out to make it an accessible place for our kids to play, and to do something ecologically sensible for our yard. In addition to a home garden, we repurposed piles of wood debris and grew some winecaps, a common northeastern mushroom that grows easily in landscaping. They look like portabellas! We moved on to shiitake logs, and got oak scraps from local landscapers and started inoculating logs. Then we got curious about what else we could do, and started growing our mushroom farm inside. C3Q: I see that your ¾-acre backyard is a functional microfarm, and that Alison is an avid gardener, but what does your mushroom farm look like? Alex: One quarter of our basement is our mushroom growing space. Effectively, it's a mini-greenhouse setup, and we rapidly got a sense for how we could grow more and what a production system could look like. The hardest part of growing mushrooms is that they need high humidity and a lot of fresh air, so the trick is to manage the movement of air to meet their needs of fresh-but-moist air, which can be challenging with the temperature changes in New Jersey. The first customer we ever had was Juniper Hill Restaurant, right down the street. We began selling them mushrooms to use in dishes. When the pandemic hit and we were locked away at home, we figured why not try something bigger and more interesting, and connect more with the community. The capacity to generate your own food, year round, is non-trivial, and we started thinking more intensely about production. We built a more sophisticated growing space, and started farming oyster mushrooms. We used social media to post things and connect with people. We found that it was more convenient to predict and manage growth with a mushroom subscription service. We still sell surplus on our porch, but mostly we do a pre-paid website subscription with a re-usable cooler bag for a pound of mushrooms a week for a month. New varieties are available every week, and most of our customers are families in the community, and we sell directly to them. C3Q: What is your favorite mushroom that you are growing, and why; and what is your favorite recipe? Do you have any tips for home gardeners? Alex: My favorite are the log-grown shiitake; they are so meaty and delicious and versatile; and they are beautiful when they are coming out of the logs. I feel good about the amount of energy it takes to yield something so fantastic! I'm also really excited about the Chicken of the Woods mushroom, which is common but sporadic in the wild around here. They like to grow on dead ash trees. I would love to isolate a local culture that could grow on ash because of all the ash trees that came down because of the emerald ash borer. Our family's favorite mushroom dish is the simplest, when we sauté the mushrooms in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and adapt them to any dish we are eating. If I had to give one tip to people with home gardens, it would be to not underestimate the possibility of growing your garden pretty late into the fall and winter in New Jersey, especially if you use a little row cover or sheeting. We have been very surprised by this, and have kale that grows nearly year round! With just a little bit of effort, you can go really late into the winter around here. Visit Radiant Mushrooms at 49 Beaver Avenue in Annandale or check them out online at: www. RadiantMushrooms.com for fresh and healthy mushrooms. Follow them on Instagram too! Welcome to with Rachel Sprague If I had to give one tip to people with home gardens, it would be to not underestimate the possibility of growing your garden pretty late into the fall and winter in New Jersey, especially if you use a little row cover or sheeting. – Alex Ireland Radiant Mushrooms Rachel Sprague, a resident of Clinton Township, has a degree in journalism from Rutgers. With her husband Russell, Rachel is raising two young children in the Clinton Township School District. She thinks that Clinton Township is a delightful place to live. Alex Ireland and his children have fun growing mushrooms locally. "You are so much sunshine in every square inch." ~ Walt Whitman

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