Picked up some Oyster Mushroom spores

[sammyqc]

at Ritchies the other day. I'll have to see what happens in a year or two.

[ottawagardener]

I look forward to your reports. I am interested in growing mushrooms both in and outside but beyond having a heavy tome on the subject, I have no experience and am kinda 'scared!'

[ceara]

Actually the wood log plugs or the kits are the easiest things to do.

If you do logs, all you do is drill a hole and pop in one of the dowels. Some instructions say to seal the hole with some beeswax or other type of wax to keep out contamination competition. Then let it colonize the wood. When fully colonized, dunk the log into water for 24 hours and this will encourage it to fruit. After fruiting, let it rest and then it can be dunked again for another flush. Logs should last a few years. When they start to not produce any more they can be buried in the garden or compost pile and may flush again.

If you use a kit and the kit begins to peter out, like with Oysters, then you can split up the used block and sandwich it between new logs, like a mushroom totem pole. Then the mycelium will eventually eat it's way into the new logs.

This is a project we will start this year. Will plug some fir/spruce loving varieties into stumps out in the woods behind the house and also inoculate some logs with Oysters to have nearer the house and some other non-log types like Shaggy Manes. There's even another type of Oyster that will be happy in the garden underneath other plants as long as it has a cozy place to live, like some straw. Would go good with strawberry plants I think. If memory serves correct, it's Elm Oyster? Or Phoenix Oyster? I can't remember. lol

I saw someone's project in the southern USA and he put spent blue Oyster blocks into a large burlap sack and filled it full of twigs and miscellaneous material. And the Oyster mycelium went nuts and fruited in there.

If you want to try, Oysters will be among the easiest. They have the ability to colonize fast and will overtake lots of contamination like a big truck plowing over a row of cars. lol Plus they are soooo tasty!

There's a group based out of Italy that will provide cultures of many types of edible gourmet mushrooms and all you pay is the postage. Anything from sawdust spawn to chunks of culture, test tubes, prints and full petrie dishes.

When I can find the link to the strain list, I will post it here for you.