Turkey Tail are easy to grow, and one of the most studied of all the medicinal mushrooms. The fruit body is slow to grow, but requires little care. Harvest at its’ prime and make medicinal tea and/or tinctures.
Kits may be grown indoors, and may also be fruited outdoors during the spring and fall. A humid environment is important to mushroom formation, and can be created by misting water from a spray bottle into a humidity tent.
Watch this talk by mushroom expert Paul Stamets on the medicinal values of turkey tail. This segment is part of a longer TED Talk on medicinal mushrooms.
All natural ingredients. Your kit contains a mushroom culture grown on pure hardwood sawdust and organic Canadian wheat bran. No chemical fertilizers, nor pesticides, used.
Fruiting instructions can be found here.
Kit size ~2kg (4lbs+)
Visit our Learn to Grow page to learn how to expand your mushroom kit into buckets of sawdust or used to inoculate logs!
For peak viability we recommend using your mushroom products within weeks, and storing in a cool location until use. Refrigeration between 2-4C is ideal for the longest shelf-life. Even when refrigerated, the fungal mycelium continues to grow, and eventually mushrooms burst out one way or another.
After harvesting you should store the mushrooms in a paper bag, which allows them to breathe. Leave them in the main part of the refrigerator to get good airflow, not the produce drawer. They will keep for a couple of days when stored in a paper bag in the refrigerator. Dehydrated Turkey Tail mushrooms will keep up to two years when stored in a sealed container in a cool, dry, and dark place.
Turkey Tail mushrooms have a leathery, tough texture, creating a chewy consistency, and have a mild, earthy flavor. Turkey Tail mushrooms earn their name from their similarity in appearance to a turkey’s multicolored tail and have been used for centuries as a medicinal mushroom by traditional herbalists.
Turkey Tail mushrooms are not commonly consumed fresh as their chewy, leathery texture is often regarded as unpalatable. The mushrooms are popularly dehydrated or dried for use in teas and are ground into a powder with other mushrooms as a medicinal supplement. When used as a tea, the mushrooms are simmered in boiling water for an extended period to extract essential nutrients. Once brewed, the tea contains a semi-bitter, earthy flavor and can be balanced with honey or other teas such as reishi or green tea. The extracted concoction can also be used to cook curries, stews, and soups or used to flavor vegetables and rice.
Turkey Tail mushrooms contain vitamins B3 and D, which can help boost the immune system, and provide prebiotics that can help increase digestion. The mushrooms also contain antioxidants such as flavonoids and phenols that are known to have anti-inflammatory properties. In traditional Chinese medicine, Turkey Tail mushrooms are used to boost the immune system and promote overall wellness within the body. Turkey Tail mushrooms have been brewed in teas and medicinal drinks for thousands of years in China and are consumed daily to promote long life, health, and strength. Turkey Tail mushrooms are also believed to help increase energy and fight inflammation in the digestive tract.
