Volunteers needed: Help with decorating, Mushroom Craft Table, UV Night Walk, and break-down!

Explore the forest in a new light and discover the diverse, nocturnal ecosystem of the Circle Acres Preserve with UV flashlight to see glowing mushrooms, lichens, night pollinators, birds, insects, plants, and more. This family friendly event will highlight fungi’s role in transforming a former dumpsite into a thriving urban forest. Learn how fungi are entangled in the forest helping plants gain water and nutrients, to creating the pigments that give flowers their beautiful colors, to helping plants communicate with pollinators. We will have UV flashlights so we can attract and see the diverse, nocturnal ecosystem in a new light. Guests will learn how to look for, photograph and be community scientists in adding fluorescing organisms to the iNaturalist project. 

Come before dark for mushroom snacks, music, mushroom crafts, a tour of the Myco Research Station. Participate in hands-on demos to upcycle mushroom blocks. Learn how to divert organic matter from the waste stream, and turn it into valuable resources for your home and community. Here are a few ways we will show you how to cycle mushroom blocks:

1. Grow Culinary Mushrooms: Techniques for cultivating delicious and nutritious mushrooms and cycle nutrients at the same time. 

2. Feed Plants and Wildlife: Use mushroom blocks to feed the soil food web. 

3. Build Water-Saving and Fungal-Rich Soil: Create easy and sustainable compost solutions that conserve water and improve soil quality. 

4. Clean Up Contaminated Soil: Explore the power of mycoremediation to detoxify and restore polluted environments. We will also be doing demos on how to inoculate invasive tree logs to cycle nutrients and make them available for native plants and organisms. 

ITINERARY:

5:00 - 7:00: Mushroom Block Demos at Myco Research Station. 

5:00 - 7:00: Mushroom Crafts Table

7:00 - 8:00: Guided Tour of Fluorescent Forest / Glow-in-the-Dark Bingo 

We will have mushroom blocks for everyone to take home and upcycle. Mushroom snacks and warm Mush Love Tea provided. Get creative with glowing outfits, face paint and don’t forget your camera and tripod.

Learn more here about how some plants, mushrooms, lichens and insects have evolved color patterns that are visible in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic light spectrum, which humans cannot see but many insects, birds and animals can see.  

PARKING: Park in the first lot by softball fields at Roy G. Guerrero Park, 400 Grove Blvd and walk towards ACC until you see the the Circle Acres entrance and sign.

Volunteers needed: Help with decorating, Mushroom Craft Table, UV Night Walk, and break-down!