Mushroom Experiments: Wow, That Was Fast!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm starting this thread to document my experiments with mushroom growing... I have been thinking that I need something more to go into my weekly CSA baskets first thing in the spring. Mushrooms seem like a crop that I can produce any time of year and time to be ready when I know there will be a sparse week for baskets.

I have started collecting mushroom germplasm...

I went to the grocery store and collected:

Enoki
Common Button
Shiitake
White/Gray Oyster

I soaked corrugated cardboard in 0.3% hydrogen peroxide solution (1 part off-the shelf peroxide diluted with 9 parts of water). To the soak water I added a pinch of water soluble plant fertilizer. After soaking I removed one of the surface layers of the cardboard to expose the corrugations.

I chopped up the mushrooms into about 1/4" chunks. Into quart size plastic bags I put a piece of cardboard and sprinkled some mushroom pieces onto it (6-20 pieces per layer). I built up 5-6 layers in this manner.

I made two bags for each species. One went into the refrigerator, and the other went into the closet.

The shiitake in the closet started to show tentative growth after 3 days.

After 19 hours the Oyster mushroom in the closet already has a vigorous growth of mycelium from all parts of the cut up fruit. Wow! That was fast!!!

[MikeH]

Joseph,

Holy Crap - that was easy!

Questions:

1) What's the purpose of the hydrogen peroxide?
2) water soluble plant fertilize - what were the N-P-K ratios?
3) Got picture, please?

Regards,
Mike

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Feb 9, 2012 15:04:40 GMT -5 MikeH said:

1) What's the purpose of the hydrogen peroxide?
2) water soluble plant fertilize - what were the N-P-K ratios?
3) Got picture, please?

The peroxide is a disinfectant. And since mushrooms produce peroxide while they are growing, it is not harmful to them. I rinsed my knife with pure strength (3%), and washed my hands and the cutting board with it, etc.

The fertilizer has long since lost it's label, but I use it for growing lichens, so it would have been a bloom formula, something like 15-30-15. I was looking for my wine must nutrients, but I found the soluble fertilizer first.

Here are some teaser photos. This is the oyster mushroom after 19 hours. The white fuzz all around is the mycelium (roots) already forming.



And a zoomed out view of the same piece of mushroom.


The first batch I did earlier in the week was with button mushrooms. I covered most of the mushrooms with cardboard, so I couldn't see what was happening inside. That was aggravating to me, so I left some cut up fruits on top in the later batches so I can more easily observe what's going on. There is no visible growth on the button mushrooms after 4 days.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, we did Mushrooms and it was a great adventure. Be sure to open those bags every day. They need to breathe.

[MikeH]

Joseph,

Hmmmm. We'd like to introduce mushrooms into our woods. Any thoughts on how to manage that using the technique you used. Perhaps we should introduce some of the woods floor material into the bag or will that upset the sterile environment. Maybe we should wait until mycelium are well-established and mushrooms starting to form and then introduce woods floor material for them to continue growing in. Thoughts and ponderings would be welcome.

Regards,
Mike

[steev]

Sometimes the bags of oat hay/bunny beans that I have sitting around host the type of straw mushroom that often comes canned.

Serious efforts to grow mushrooms are high on my to-do list. My favorite produce market has at least 12 wild varieties right now; I must research their media needs. Peroxide is a very good idea as a sterilant.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Feb 9, 2012 21:25:02 GMT -5 MikeH said:

Hmmmm. We'd like to introduce mushrooms into our woods. Any thoughts on how to manage that using the technique you used. Perhaps we should introduce some of the woods floor material into the bag or will that upset the sterile environment. Maybe we should wait until mycelium are well-established and mushrooms starting to form and then introduce woods floor material for them to continue growing in. Thoughts and ponderings would be welcome.

With oyster mushrooms, that are very fast growing, and generalists in what substrate they grow on... I would recommend a strategy like this:

Chop up the mushrooms. Introduce them into the medium and let it grow for a while. Once it is good and white, break it apart and plant the pieces into the woods.

I'm planning on burying sawdust to make beds out in the shade of the permaculture garden, and then seeding them with spawn grown indoors.

I chopped more oyster mushrooms today. (Smaller pieces) Then I mixed them with aspen wood chips treated the same way as with the cardboard, then put them in bottles to grow. I planted the left overs into the garden.

Oyster mushrooms grow so fast, that they keep ahead of microorganisms better than slower growing varieties.

One experiment that I am intending to try is to inoculate an entire bale of straw. I'll do it either by opening the bale up and sprinkling cardboard or sawdust grown spawn into it, or by use of my most recent invention:

Take jute or hemp twine. Inoculate and incubate it with spawn and then use a tire-plug tool (modified to be long enough to go through the whole bale) to insert the twine the entire depth of the bale.

[steev]

Maybe you could inoculate whole grain, load it into shotgun shells, and inoculate whatever. I can hear the neighbors, "He says he's raising mushrooms...".

[oxbowfarm]

Joseph, I've recently been reading Sepp Holzers permaculture book. He does this quick and dirty bale inoculation method where he dumps a straw bale in a pond to get soaked. Then pulls it out and lets it drain a bit and shoves some spawn into the wet bale. I imagine they don't all take, but you'd be selecting for aggressive colonizing fungi that way right?

Do any of these edibles grow on conifer sawdust? My favorite local sawmill has basically an unlimited supply of sawdust, but its mostly white pine and eastern hemlock.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I've been stewing about whether or not I could lift a bale of wet straw...

I'm definitely liking the oyster mushrooms. They are exceedingly aggressive at colonizing wood chips or cardboard compared to any of the other species I have tried.

I keep reading over and over again to not grow mushrooms on conifers. But when I am in a conifer forest there are plenty of mushrooms growing on the fallen logs... So I guess we could do what we do with any other crop... Plant a genetically diverse population, (perhaps via spores not via fruits/mycelia), and select for what grows best.

Here's what my most recent attempt looks like after 46 hours. I really like chopping the oyster mushrooms into quite small pieces. The smaller chunks (bottle on left) grow faster, and inoculate more of the medium faster.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

"The Mushroom Cultivator" recommends growing Psilocybe cyanescens on ...fir... For other mushrooms, it also recommends if using conifer sawdust to dilute it 1:1 with deciduous sawdust.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, we bought these white sterile disks from Paul. They sort of look extra dense remay. They are the same size as the jar lids for canning jars. You punch holes in the lids, and put the disk on top. Then you don't have to open the jars.

I'll rummage the cupboards and send you one. Boil it when it gets there, so that it's sterile. Glad you're having fun!

[ottawagardener]

Thank you for this experiment. I'm going to try it.

[swamper]

If you are growing pleurotis / oyster mushroom mycelium do NOT open the bag at all. it will outcompete molds best if the CO2 is very high. open and chill briefly when you are ready to induce fruiting. straw would be a good media to use.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, I live one farm over from a huge mushroom farm. Good thing the wind blows the other way!