Growing Health Promoting Mushrooms

Growing Health Promoting Mushrooms

Growing Health Promoting Mushrooms

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Michael Bennett and his wife Judy have been successfully raising mushrooms commercially near Selah in the Yakima Valley for the last four years. Bennett says that one of the main reasons they decided to grow mushrooms is because of the incredible health benefits that several varieties have.

BENNETT: Right now we're working with seven, experimenting with two more varieties of oysters. We have five different types of shiitake, two types of lion's mane, burgundy wine caps, also reishi, which is a medical mushroom for asthma, and the lion's mane is a medical mushroom for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, stroke, brain concussion damage. The oysters are the highest in statins of any of the mushrooms, which helps with good cholesterol, decreases bad cholesterol, helps to keep platelets from forming in the arteries to cause blood clots, which cause strokes. That's really what got my interest - was all the benefit that they have.

Bennett knows that the growing mediums used for their J & M Gourmet Mushrooms is important, because mushrooms absorb and concentrate whatever they grow in.

BENNETT: Today we use a hops extract from the micro-brewery, we use spent brewers grain, we use U.S. and Canadian cardboard, we use coffee grounds from the espresso stand, along with the straw different varieties of wood chips, depending on the variety of mushrooms we're growing. So, we've come a long way in four years, but we're still learning.

Bennett says they sell their mushrooms at area farmers markets as well as deliver locally, and have now started supplying local wineries. For more information contact selahmushrooms@yahoo.com or call 509-480-4397.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.

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