Oyster mushrooms update, 07-21-04

[Katra]

Yay!!!

I went out to the greenhouse this morning to check on plants and stuff, and looked into the ice chest with my oyster mushroom culture and there were 2 nice little clusters of mushrooms growing out of the top of the toilet paper roll! :-) :-) :-)

I am just so thrilled as I've never tried to grow mushrooms before, and did not buy a grow kit... I started these from scratch using some pureed fresh oyster mushroom stems and bases.

Many MANY thanks to the person that posted on RGE about the toilet roll method! I did not use a bag, I used an ice chest instead and even tho' I don't remember the exact date I planted them, I think it's been 10 to 12 weeks.

They sprouted up literally overnight and I did not go out there until about noon, so they were looking a little dried and curled due to the heat, so I picked them and put them into some cold water in the refrigerator and they plumped right up.

They are not very large but that's ok as the smaller ones are usually more tender anyway. They will be lightly sauteed in some butter in the skillet with some steak juice. ;-d

Darn I wish I had a digital camera. :-(

Yay!!!

K.

[simy1]

If oysters do not have enough light, they will stay small. It happened to me a couple of times. It is probably too late for this fruiting, but two toilet paper rolls may have another fruiting in them 6 weeks from now (put them in the shade, with a moisture tent -clear garbage bag with holes, not touching substrate- around them). After the second fruiting break the mycelium up and spread it into a larger substrate (say, 4 gallons of wood chips with some coffee grounds, all boiled) outdoors in the shade to see if you can get more.

BTW I tried blending some stems and mixed them in a boiled wheat-sawdust blend. It did not work. I am guessing that the initial mycelium needs a substrate that is easier to penetrate than boiled wheat or sawdust. It was also only one cup in one gallon of substrate. Toilet paper is, I am sure, a lot easier to penetrate, and the ratio of mushroom to substrate much more favorable. so next time I will follow your recipe verbatim.

[Katra]

I'm fixin' to add coffee grounds to the wood shavings that the rolls are sitting in. :-) I recently purchased Stamet's book on raising culinary and medicinal mushrooms. LOTS of good advice. seems that oyster mushrooms are one of his favorites.

Contams?

I need to find hardwood sawdust/shavings! The pine bedding available at the petshop is clean, but pine seems to be too acidic, so I'm wondering if adding Calcium carbonate to the current semi-colonized shavings I have if it'd help. :-)

Supposedly, you can start them in sterile grain media in sterile jars, but I think you'd need to start with a mycelial block off of a PDA agar plate. You can use a piece of fresh, sterile tissue (cut from the inside of the cap preferably) and place that onto an agar plate to get a good strong mycelia start, then just take a block of that and drop it into the grain jar using sterile technique. Pre-poured fungal agar plates are pretty cheap. I'm seriously considering getting some and playing around with larger batches of substrate.

Once that is colonized well, (should not take more than a week), you'd then mix the colonized grain spawn with hardwood sawdust and some coffee grounds to provide more nitrogen.

I did use an ice chest instead of a bag. :-) An enclosed bag would probably be better as it'd keep the bugs out better. :-P

K.