A FUN guy, who found he had too mush-room in his garden, has created a business turning produce from his back yard into gourmet ingredients for top-end restaurants.
Croydon environmentalist Andrew Dickinson started growing oyster mushrooms after he discovered waste coffee grounds were the perfect thing to stimulate their growth.
The 48-year-old has been collecting spent coffee from cafes Matthews Yard, off Surrey Street, and Tresor Café in South Croydon and using it to grow his produce.
Spent coffee grounds are packed with nutrients mushrooms need to grow, including nitrogen and sugars.
Mr Dickinson said: "For a long time I have been saving coffee grounds from when Matthews Yard first opened. I collect about three or four kilos a week.
"I looked at what uses there are for coffee grounds, and found that you can grow a type of mushrooms. So I got myself booked on a course with Fungi Futures [a social enterprise in Devon], which specialises in mushroom growing."
Growing mushrooms from coffee is a relatively easy process.
Simplified, it involves mixing mushroom spawn and waste coffee in bags and storing them for roughly five to six weeks.
Mushroom spores colonise the coffee, turning it white, and eventually produce mushrooms in order to release more spores.
The spent coffee grounds have been pasteurised by boiling water during coffee-making, taking care of an otherwise complicated step in the process.
"There is not much labour," said Mr Dickinson, who started his Fungi Futures course in May. "It is mainly just checking them."
Mr Dickinson took a batch of his mushrooms to a high-end restaurant in South Croydon recently – and received a rapturous response from the chef.
"The chef said he did not normally like Oyster mushrooms," he said, "because they ones grown on a large commercial scale did not have the flavour they wanted, but these did."
Oyster mushrooms are the best to grow using coffee, because they are the most versatile and most likely to succeed.
Mr Dickinson reckons each bag produces about 25 per cent of its weight back in mushrooms – making a relatively productive endeavour.
He hopes to expand his project, to fund social enterprise Green Croydon and reduce waste.
He added: "They said [at the restaurant] they were really tasty. Now what I need to do is get more coffee and start selling them.
"When I think of all the places that could be supplied…."
