By Brittany Ward
Feb. 15, 2018

Calling all mushroom and gardening lovers! This Sunday at The Commons, Luke Norse will be teaching a workshop, Growing Edible Mushrooms.

Starting at 7 p.m., Norse will be teaching how to take care of mushroom kits and how to pasteurize straw for oyster, shiitake and wine cap mushrooms. Mushroom kits will be for sale at $20 per kit; lion’s mane, oyster, shiitake, wine cap mushrooms are available. Contact Norse ahead of time to if you’re interested in buying a kit.

In October, Norse had taught his herb study group how to grow edible mushrooms. It went over really well and other friends had expressed interest in learning more so he taught a workshop at The Commons about a month ago.

Norse’s interest in learning more about growing edible and medicinal mushrooms began five years ago when he was having some health issues. He started getting mildly electrocuted from using the light switch or when cleaning the commercial screen printer, making his nerves feel on edge. This led him to studies on how lion’s mane mushrooms helped with regenerating nerve cells and he thought it was worth testing out. The mushrooms seemed to help, so Norse bought his own lion’s mane mushroom kit and went to a lot of mushroom growing workshops.

Norse says, “Other health benefits are that mushrooms contain Vitamin D and Protein. Some mushrooms have specific benefits. For example oyster mushrooms can help with arthritis. Reishi mushrooms are good for the heart. Cordyceps mushrooms are used by athletes because they help increase oxygen to the blood.”

Currently, Norse works at Nebraska Mushroom handling packaging and transporting but soon will be helping with harvesting and the farmers markets. Nebraska Mushroom sells mushrooms to local restaurants, grocery stores like Open Harvest, some Hyvee locations and more.

Norse is also a beekeeper, having begun just last year with only one hive that produced 10 gallons of honey and plans on having more hives this year. His beekeeping journey started when he took a beekeeping class at Southeast Community College, which he highly recommends.

To add to his greenthumb, Norse plays music. He is in an experimental rock band called Gamma Goat that performed this past Thursday night at Lincoln Exposed. (Gamma Goat is having a CD release show at Duffy’s on Feb. 28). In addition to Gamma Goat, Norse also has a solo project called Multidimensional Cowboy.

There will be another workshop on culturing your own forged mushrooms that has yet to be scheduled, keep a lookout on The Commons calendar for updated-future events.

Brittany Ward is an editorial intern with KZUM.