The People & Gardens Team are very excited this season to be embarking on a new project.

The words coffee and mushrooms are not normally seen in the same sentence but then here at Watering Lane we like to try and be a bit different! We are planning to grow gourmet oyster mushrooms using waste coffee grounds as the growing medium.

The idea comes from Adam Sayner, the director of Fungi Futures, who will supply us with the mushroom spawn. The Eden and Heligan Catering Departments will supply the waste coffee grounds. The coffee has the right growing conditions for the mushrooms, plenty of nitrogen and moisture. So with some horticulture, science and a magic recipe it is amazing to think that we can produce a delicious, gourmet crop of mushrooms from all that waste coffee. Even then the story won’t end as we hope to use and sell the spent mushroom compost as a soil improver. A new growing cycle begins again.

by Emma

Update, 27 June 2013:

Look at our beautiful mushrooms!