Summary:

Growing your own food is like printing your own money. This idea would allow St. Paul to become even more sustainable by creating neighborhood fungal gardens on marginal unused land. The United States is starting to have a problem with food and the repercussions that come from not eating a healthy diet such as the increase in certain cancers, heart disease, and diabetes, among other diet related illnesses. This grant would utilize marginal land that is not used for anything in residential areas and create fungal gardens that people can come to and pick edible mushrooms. Many common gourmet mushrooms such as shitake, enoki and maitake have anti-tumor, anti-viral, and anti-cancer properties as well as the ability to decrease cholesterol and increase immune function. This idea would create fungal gardens around the city especially in areas that are determined to be food deserts by utilizing the Food Access Research Atlas that the United States Department of Agriculture produces. These gardens would increase awareness of other food sources because many people are unaware of the benefits of eating mushrooms. These gardens would allow anyone in the area to come and pick mushrooms for free that they could take home and eat. This would increase peoples physical activity as they would have to walk around and look for mushrooms as well as provide an outlet for learning about mushroom cultivation and different gourmet mushrooms that grow in Minnesota using various signs around the gardens that point out different species of gourmet mushrooms as well as the methods used for home mushroom cultivation. There would be a monthly session where the public can come to learn how to cultivate mushrooms at home for free, the health benefits of the different mushrooms growing in the garden. To ensure this idea goes on into the future a non-profit will be started to start urban fungal farms to provide the funds to maintain the fungal gardens as well as provide people to give the seminars.