This workshop will give you the materials and know-how to start growing NZ native oyster mushrooms in repurposed closed containers at home! Growing healthy food is usually associated with a garden plot, but this isn’t always a reality for everyone. What if we said you could grow top value, natural food from dried grass clippings, straw, or shredded old food grade cardboard boxes?

Join us if you are keen to learn about and try your hand at growing mushrooms with this convenient, controlled method at home!

This three-hour session includes the materials and instruction to guide you step-by-step through the process of setting up a container with NZ native oyster mushroom spawn and allows you to walk away with the skills and confidence to create and harvest from more containers at home on your own!

Join expert tutor, Ellen Schindler, at Kelmarna Gardens for this crash course in growing NZ native oyster mushrooms. The first half of this skills-focused, hands-on workshop will be learning about mushroom cultivation, which mushrooms you can grow, what materials are best to use, and what to look out for along the way. Then you will get to work through each step of the process -- from preparing the container, the substrate material, to inoculation, and how to care for your container after you take it home at the end of the session!

Tickets include: growing materials (pasteurised substrate & NZ native spawn)

What to bring:

- a clean 2-litre plastic ice cream container with lid (for your container)

- a refillable water bottle (to stay hydrated)

- weather appropriate gear (to keep comfortable)

- a notebook and pen for taking notes (if you like)

- a lunch or snack (if you like)

If at all possible, participants are also asked and encouraged to please bring:

- scissors and/or box cutter knife

- power drill (corded, or cordless + spare battery pack)

- drill bits, size 6 and/or 7

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Ellen Schindler is a passionate gardener and community organiser. Since 2006 she has nurtured her home garden in Sandringham into a productive food system with about 55 fruit trees of all types and sizes, beehives, chooks, and vegetable patches. She is also a committed volunteer who has been instrumental in establishing the Homestead and the Dignan Street Community gardens in Pt Chevalier and has been involved in planting and maintaining fruit trees in parks and grass berms across Sandringham.

Over the past few years, Ellen has indulged her interest in cultivating mushrooms on logs as well as in containers, experimenting in creating opportunities for valuable food production in the otherwise darker, more overlooked spaces in her garden.

Ellen believes that healthy food should be accessible to everyone, and teaching hands-on DIY workshops is one of her favourite ways to achieve this goal! In this workshop, Ellen is looking forward to sharing with you her homegrown mushroom experience and encouraging you to explore the process for yourself -- hopefully to find that it’s good fun and a lot easier than it looks!

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At Kelmarna, we strive to make education accessible for everyone. So, where possible, we offer a 40% discount on our workshops to valid Community Services Card holders. If you book one of these tickets, please email us a copy of your valid Community Services Card, and remember to bring it along to the workshop. Please note that this option does NOT include Super Gold Card holders. Ngā mihi.