Lazy mans mushroom cultivation through selectivity

I'm pretty excited by my seeming initial success at growing enoki mycelium on cardboard in my fridge. I'm more and more fascinated by the low labor-input methods that use selectivity rather than sterilization to get desired mycelium to grow.

So far, the only two selective/semi selective substrates I know of are cardboard, straw and burlap. I'm aware that coarse, breathable substrates encourage air circulation and therefore discourage mold. furthermore, Stamets observes that molds simply don't like cardboard for some reason, presumably the glue. Stamets says that mycelium, being very fabric-like recognizes burlap as also being a fabric and colonizes it very rapidly. It has the added benefit of being able to contain substrate after being inoculated and act as a barrier to foreign spores. Are you folks aware of any other selective/semi selective substrates?

Hydrogen peroxide will slow mycelium but not stop it completely. Mold spores and bacteria on the other hand are terminated. I read a post on shroomery.org where one guy was claiming 99% success with H2O2 compared to 80% give or take from pasteurization. I supposed pasteurization could also be considered selective/semi selective preparation since it kills mold and mold spores and non-thermophilic bacteria but leaves thermophillic bacteria which are presumably beneficial to saprophytes. Are you folks aware of any other selective/semi selective preparation methods?

I was really excited when i read about "cold incubation" in Mycelium Running. Cold loving mycelium will grow just fine in the cold while many molds and bacteria will go dormant. In the PNW, this could be as simple as leaving a box full of stem butts and substrate out in the black berry patch to get rained on then retrieve it in the fall to inoculate other substrates. Do you folks know of any other selective/semi selective incubation processes?

I guess you could call it selectivity. People just use nutrient poor substrate to give the desired myc a leg up over competitors. Straw, cardboard, straight sawdust...My favorite low-tech method is wood pellets + boiling water in filter patch bags. Wood pellets are basically 'pre-sterilized' when they go thru the pelletizing machine. With agressive myc like oyster or reishi you can expect a pretty low contamination rate. That's another technique- more spawn equals less time colonizing equals less contamination. Enoki seems quite prone to green mold IME.

I will often pasteurize wood chips and try to increase, say, oyster or Hypsizygus Ulmarius in buckets. 140-160 for an hour or so. I wouldn't say that I'm great at it yet, but I'm learning.
john S
PDX OR

drake schutt wrote:I guess you could call it selectivity. People just use nutrient poor substrate to give the desired myc a leg up over competitors. Straw, cardboard, straight sawdust...My favorite low-tech method is wood pellets + boiling water in filter patch bags. Wood pellets are basically 'pre-sterilized' when they go thru the pelletizing machine. With agressive myc like oyster or reishi you can expect a pretty low contamination rate. That's another technique- more spawn equals less time colonizing equals less contamination. Enoki seems quite prone to green mold IME.

good input. Instead of straw and cardboard, one could just say that nutrient poor substrate in general is semi selective.

More spawn is a good one that i forgot to mention. It's not "selective" but definitely important. Stamets recommends that inexperienced amateurs use 20% spawn to substrate and more experienced cultivators can be consistently successful with 10 or even 5%. I assume he is talking about aggressive oysters and reishi like you mentioned. I wonder how much would be necessary for less aggressive mycelium or maybe sterile cultivation is more practical for less aggressive species...

dan long wrote:

drake schutt wrote:I guess you could call it selectivity. People just use nutrient poor substrate to give the desired myc a leg up over competitors. Straw, cardboard, straight sawdust...My favorite low-tech method is wood pellets + boiling water in filter patch bags. Wood pellets are basically 'pre-sterilized' when they go thru the pelletizing machine. With agressive myc like oyster or reishi you can expect a pretty low contamination rate. That's another technique- more spawn equals less time colonizing equals less contamination. Enoki seems quite prone to green mold IME.

good input. Instead of straw and cardboard, one could just say that nutrient poor substrate in general is semi selective.

More spawn is a good one that i forgot to mention. It's not "selective" but definitely important. Stamets recommends that inexperienced amateurs use 20% spawn to substrate and more experienced cultivators can be consistently successful with 10 or even 5%. I assume he is talking about aggressive oysters and reishi like you mentioned. I wonder how much would be necessary for less aggressive mycelium or maybe sterile cultivation is more practical for less aggressive species...

I think it depends on the substrate, I use about 10% usually with my wine caps, but I usually feed them wood chips their preferred substrate.