Health benefits of Turkey tail mushrooms:
Turkey tail (scientifically known as Trametes versicolor) is a bracket-shaped mushroom that grows on different trees worldwide. Turkey tail mushroom is utilised as a powerful functional food and medicine. Turkey tail mushrooms are well-known for supporting longevity, treating infectious diseases and recently for cancer treatment. Turkey tail mushrooms stimulate overall well-being and boost immunity. Scientists discovered concentrated polysaccharides, triterpenes, phenols, and sterols in Turkey tail mushrooms; these support our bodies from diseases.
Figure: The left picture is our turkey tail grow kits after a week post-cut; the right image is the harvested turkey tail mushrooms after four weeks post-cut
MushBorn Grow Kit: We use safe and organic certified New Zealand pine wood pellets (80%), wheat bran (10%) and soybean hulls (10%) as Turkey tail substrate, mixed and cooked in our establishment to ensure there is no contamination in the block. The kits come to you fully colonised and ready to fruit. Please locate it in a well-ventilated position with the right temperature indoors or outside. Mushrooms, similar to animals, inhale oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Good ventilation and high relative humidity are critical.
You should expect a good size of the first flush of the fruiting and a reasonable amount of the second and third crops before the energy in the growing substrate finishes. You can then break it up and mix it into a shaded area of your garden bed to improve the soil and attract worms. Please cover the mix with a few inches of wood-sourced materials such as garden mulch, cardboard, and packaging papers, which provide clean energy for the mushroom mycelium (white network in your block). You will be surprised to see some new fruit poking in the incoming months.
Optimum growing conditions:
- Out of direct sunlight
- Good ventilation and fresh air
- Away from attractive sources for fruit flies
- Efficiently grow at 15-24°C and 75%–90% relative humidity.
Steps to starting your kit:
- As described above, remove the block from its packaging carton and place it in a good position with optimum growing conditions. Inspect the bag; if a thick white mycelium layer is at the top, harvest it before preparing it for fruiting [Turkey tail mycelium is a highly potent substrate, and people use it to make tea]. In this case, open the bag, grab the top layer and drag it out. It should come off like a cap in one piece. Please clean and sanitise your hands before doing this. After harvest, empty any remaining loose pieces, wrap the bag and position it upside down; the harvested area should sit on the ground.
- Use a clean blade and cut the marked lines on the kit. If there are no marks on the bag, you could make horizontal dash lines in two rows and then cut. Each cut should be separated from its successive one by about 3 cm.
- Spray the cut area regularly and watch for mushroom budding after a few weeks. The block does not need water. Misting cut-off zones stimulates the fungi to fruit.
- Turkey tail mushrooms gradually grow into a few colourful rings.
- Cleaning the cut areas, remove the remaining mushrooms to avoid fruit flies.
- When done with the block, compost the substrate, mixing it with the garden soil.
Turkey tail recipes:
Tea: Turkey tail mushroom has a tough and woody texture, so the fresh raw turkey tail is not edible. Break the fresh mushrooms into small pieces and soak them in hot water for a few hours. After cooling off, store the water in the refrigerator and gradually drink it.
Tea/ Coffee additive: Chop the mushrooms and dry them at low temperatures (40-70°C) for 12 hours in your oven or fruit dryer. Use a grinder to make powder and store it in an airtight container at room temperature or fridge. Add ½ tsp of powder to your tea or coffee in the morning or afternoon to boost your immunity every day.
If you harvested the mushroom mycelium, as explained above, you could keep it fresh in your fridge for an extended period and use it as fresh tea. It would be best to have a small piece of mycelium (1 gram), brew it in hot water and after cooling, drink it.
Tincture: To get the optimum benefit of Turkey tail mushrooms, you need to extract alcohol-soluble compounds by soaking the mushrooms in 40% alcohol for a couple of months (please buy a bottle of vodka from official liquor shops). Take out the remainder of the mushroom from the solution, add water and boil it. You must frequently add water to the boiling mixture a couple of times until you get a brownish, high-viscosity substrate. Separate the liquid part from the solid fraction using a coffee filter or cotton fabric. Add the extracted liquid to the previous alcohol solution and store it in a droplet container for daily usage. Every day, use a few drops to boost your immune system. The remaining solid can be dried, ground and used as a tea or coffee additive.