8/6/19

Mushroom Team Blog

Today was construction day on the mushroom team. We tracked down our carpenter Sheku and convinced him to do a little work on our structure. Right now, our mushroom house is broken into three pieces and we are fixing the first segment to work in. Yesterday, Marc and I bought black plastic to block light from coming in. Sheku is putting this on most of the structure except two of the side walls. The entire thing will be covered in green house glazing which will serve as a protective layer for the entire structure.

After our first trip to the market we realized that we had forgotten a few things, so we got a lift into the market to get scissors, nails and charcoal. We need the charcoal because we are starting our first grow bag!! To do this we needed to start a charcoal fire and fill our steel pressure cooker with straw. Heating to 160 degrees F for 45 minuets will remove most if not all the bacteria.

We are showing Jawara all the steps we do to make a grow bag. When we leave, he will be in charge of continuing to make grow bags and continuing updating our grow structure.

Today was constantly rainy and gave us a good look at some of the conditions we will have to deal with. We are thinking about adding windows to the structure to deal with the heat in the dry season but unless we could close them carefully this might damage the structure. We also are working on balancing light levels and heat levels with the amount of black plastic we use. Despite the rain we managed to complete an entire section of our structure.

The plan for tomorrow is to familiarize Jawara with the all the things mushrooms are picky about.