Tell us what you're doing with Spore, spawn and such.

Greetings, There is not much to be seen on form Re: Fungi. Maybe it is the time of year. I think there are many who would like to know what you are doing or planing and what you have done so far. Even something you've tried that has failed would be good reading, we can learn with you what works or doesn't.
I've learned a good deal and gathered much information on this forum, reading what is tucked here and there in threads and posts. Thanks for that.

I am getting things together, planning, wanting to germinate some spore, Oysters. I will try to post my grand success or if I fall on my face, I'll post that.

We are busy but I'll try to be back.

Please post what you have tried that didn't work, let us know what has. Thankyou

Richard

I'm planning on starting some new mushroom growing projects around the farm by early spring. Sometime this winter, I plan to order oyster and almond agaricus spawn from Field and Forest in Wisconsin. Sometime in February, I'll be felling a poplar tree near my main orchard that is blocking light. Then I plan to inoculate the poplar logs with oyster spawn and then chip the rest of it into chips. I'll use the chips as mulch in the orchard and feed the king stropharia patches already growing around the raspberries and fruit trees. I've naturalized a strain of king stropharia to my farm and it is now growing in the main garden, around the blueberries, and underneath the raspberries and a few fruit trees in the orchard. It's real nice to get edible mushrooms around here in the summer during the dry spell when mushrooms are not usually available in the wild. I'm going to grow the almond agaricus on leached cow manure, as well as on some regular compost piles/ beds in the garden. I've had some success with this species before and it is one of my favorite mushrooms- they are really delicious and also fruit in the summer, which I really appreciate. I'll also be liming the Oregon white truffle patches around here this winter, as this species really loves calcium-rich soil. I found some nice truffles last spring and I'm hoping for more this year.

That sounds I'm not familiar with agricus. I hoping to get mushrooms to grow coming up each year. Morels grow here when and where they wish and Shaggy Mane is even more elusive. I think Oyster may be the one. We have acres of Fir and some Pine, if Oysters can make it through the winter, we'll be laughing.

I maybe like you should have ordered spawn instead of spore, I may send for some spawn even as we work with the spore. I'm trying not to obsess but the but.

I have containers much like petri dishes.

Back soon.

Just reread your post. Hearing things like" main orchard" and "liming the Oregon white truffle patches" sounds wonderful! Never tasted a truffle, for all I know they may be growing here in the valley. Reading other of your posts it is clear you work the land. Glad to hear what you're up to.

The big snows haven't come to the Sierra Range yet. The mushrooms my youngest and I will be working with will be grown indoors. I'll be sure to pick before they spore, learned that on this forum. If we are successful, we'll arrange an out building.

Actually, you have probably eaten Agaricus bisporus many times. (This is the fancy latin name for the common "button" mushrooms seen in your local supermarket, as well as crimini and portobellos.) I like to grow almond agaricus (A. subrufescens) because it is better adapted for natural culture and it is really delicious. In nature this species is found near Santa Cruz, California and in Florida. The Oregon white truffle is found underneath young Douglas-fir trees in the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade Mountains (usually below 2000 feet). Do you live in Northern California in the Sierra Nevada mountains? (It might be too high in elevation for Oregon white truffles there, but there could be other edible species in that area.) By the way, it is usually far easier to grow oyster mushrooms from spawn than spores. Are you using spores in sterile culture with petri dishes inside to start oyster mushroom spawn, or are you just dumping spore slurry on suitable logs or straw outside? One of the easiest ways to grow oysters is from commercial spawn on spent coffee grounds in buckets or on toilet paper rolls. Someone on this website has even grown them on phonebooks! I prefer fresh hardwood logs, especially oak and alder, although cottonwood and poplar are also excellent. Log culture can yield harvests of oysters for several years.

Button mushrooms, I love them, we'll try to grow them one day. When I was a youngster we, the whole family would pick buttons, well large ones. This was in Southern California at the ranch. Re Oysters: I plan to start them plastic dishes with caps about 1 3/4" deep. I'll make a medium for them to grow, of vermiculite and ground whole oats[ we have this for our horses] in one or two dishes. In other dishes different mixes, ground coffee, straw and what ever else comes to mind also with vermiculite.
The spores are on the way, I know the spawn would be quickest. I may order order some span also. As for preparing culture, I will be heating but not to the point of true sterile. There is a how to,by: Lets Grow Mushrooms I'll try that method.
Yes, I've seen the thread: Osters on Phone books. I think highly of it.

Do you think the spore will take too long, have less chance of success or just an extra hoop to jump through?

I avoid using spores in sterile culture because it's just too much trouble when oyster spawn is fast, cheap and easy to obtain. However, there are some people who like the start-from-scratch method. Starting from spores can be a gamble for beginners because of contamination problems. However, it is an excellent method for starting other species or local strains that are unavailable as spawn.

I layered stem butts from store-ought oyster mushrooms with wet corrugated cardboard, and placed them in three smallish plastic food storage containers. Two weeks ago, divided them and now have six plastic containers. I'm thinking I will divide them one more time, then fruit a few while increasing the size of the rest. My ultimate goal is to be growing some in an outside bed and some indoors. Not sure yet how I'll construct the outdoor bed.

Jacque, Sounds good. Do you see any sigh of growth from the stem butts or is it to early? I haven't found Oyster in a store around here, would love to have tried the same. I received some oyster spores yesterday, we're going to do the vermiculite over peralite thing as seen on " lets grow mushrooms".

Hope this goes well, yes, it would be super if they[mushrooms] can be farmed outside. I'm thinking, as you, of preparing a bed for oysters up in the trees and running a water line up there to keep them happy.
Here we are in the mountains at 6800ft, many mushrooms do grow up here, nice if Oysters can call this home.

You're getting the wet weather, you always do up there, very little snow here to date but it's coming. Spring is when the local wild mushroom have their go.
I may send for some spawn, silver Oyster, to start indoors and seed in a bed outside when the snow is gone and the ground is moist.
Good luck with your venture, posting pictures when the Oyster butts show growth would be interesting.

Richard

We inoculated groing medium/vermiculite and some phone book both Pasteurized, with oyester spore, but not using Glovebox. We did use H2O2.
Ordered spawn, we'll see how the spore do!

Pasteurized 90min. We'll see how this goes! We made up syringes with the spore. Taking the advice of a forum member we ordered spawn today, meanwhile hoping for good results with the spore.
We ground whole oats to mix with the vermiculite.

Forgive my ignorance on this matter (and most things ). But I am confused as to why you would use vermiculite? I thought that sterilization of the growing medium was important to eliminate competition? I also though the biggest benefit of vermiculite (atleast in gardens) was that it is teaming with beneficial bacteria? I am probably missing something and would love it if anyone could clear up my misunderstanding.

The vermiculite was sanitized with with the nutrient. It, the vermiculite, holds moisture and makes for a lighter, inert mixture for spawn growth. There are others who can give you more info if you need it.
I used it because people who know more about growing mushrooms suggested it. We have made several mixtures that do not include vermiculite. We shall see what works best or what doesn't.

Interesting, thank you! I have also read of people using charcoal in their mixes, do you have any experience/knowledge of this?

Never heard of that,charcoal, might be something morels would like!

Is it possible that the charcoal (if you were using it in say a remedial bed) would help the process by also storing the pollutants ect until the fungi had time to break them down? Also does anyone have any experience using the sugar/salt slurry that paul suggests in his book?

Well, The spawn has grown well in baggies and bottles, these have been placed in birthing chamber, made from plastic tub filled with peralite, and are in an area where they will receive light. We shall see!

Fencing the property, haven't had time to take pictures.

I have been experimenting with oysters. Stem butts in wood chips and cardboard. Nothing promising yet but I will keep you all posted.

Also I do have shitake in logs going well. Beefsteak poly-pore just went in last week. Maple syrup time oh my!

Well, We ate some oysters. We found our culture clump to be too dryevern tho the humidity in the growing chamber was in the 80s and 90s. We have them in water for a soak then back into the chamber.

Here are some Oysters coming up.

They coming up all over.

Sorry the same picture. Thankyou Nathan for the incouragement.

So my oysters are running, spreading nice. Why isn't everyone doing this?

We'll see what you think in two months. Glad you're enjoying the spawn run, hope the fruiting is as good.

well its been a while since I have grown any last year i started way to many jars and bags of way to many strains and most of them ended up basically rotting however i did find a couple jars of reshi that looked and smelled good so i broke them up and added them to one of my raised beds i give it 50/50 chance of surviving but worth crumbling and mixing in I also have a few jars of Omphalotus nidiformis, or ghost fungus https://www.google.com/search?q=ghost+fungus&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=rZp&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ot54T4PIHMXEtgfH0I3bDg&ved=0CDgQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=788 that still looks great just not sure about how best to fruit them i need to go through my LCs and see if anything is still viable

Try this link - https://www.google.com/search?q=ghost+fungus&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=rZp&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ot54T4PIHMXEtgfH0I3bDg&ved=0CDgQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=788 an unwelcome smiley showed up in the other one and messed things up...

I know it did but at least for me it still works it was just a google image search of ghost fungus to show it glowing

i may soon get spores for blue oyster, enoki, and wine cap mushrooms
when/if i do, i plan to fill a few jars with hardwood pegs and inoculate said jars by simply squirting some spore in there from the syringe
after the pegs are well colonized i will use the enoki nad the oyster pegs to inoculate logs and i will mix the wine cap pegs in with wood chip mulch on my corn field and around the hose outlet, its always leaking when you turn on the hose and i figure i can make use of that water thats running off out of the faucet thingy

only question, how does one sterilize the hardwood pegs?
oven?
H2O2?

Devon Olsen wrote:i may soon get spores for blue oyster, enoki, and wine cap mushrooms
when/if i do, i plan to fill a few jars with hardwood pegs and inoculate said jars by simply squirting some spore in there from the syringe
after the pegs are well colonized i will use the enoki nad the oyster pegs to inoculate logs and i will mix the wine cap pegs in with wood chip mulch on my corn field and around the hose outlet, its always leaking when you turn on the hose and i figure i can make use of that water thats running off out of the faucet thingy

only question, how does one sterilize the hardwood pegs?
oven?
H2O2?

To sterilize them you need to a pressure cooker/caner 15psi for 90min for best results, now you CAN get away with pasteurizing wood/straw in the oven or a boiling water bath but if you do that I would up the amount of spawn you use to inoculate the dowels also i would recommend using actively growing spawn rather than spores to get your wood going you will get much faster and healthier myc and a much greater chance of success just my opinion I don't claim to be a fungal master but I have grown a couple hundred lbs of a variety of mushrooms and taught the art to a few people so here is what i would recommend

buy LC syringes not spores> use these to nocc up some PF tek (PF for PSYLOCYBE FANATICUS aka Robert ' Billy' McPherson, creator of the PF TEK) jars you can use a hot water bath to "sterilize" the jars with this method but if you have a PC use it cause you want to kill off everything to make sure your culture has the best chance at the same time I would mix up a few jars of your own LC(water and honey don't go above 4% sugar or it will take freaking forever)> now that you have a bunch of pint or half pint jars with healthy little cakes you can fruit a few in a Rubbermaid/sterilite tote with a couple inches of moist perlite on the bottom (not 100% sure if you can fruit Wine Cap (Stropharia rugosa annulata indoor i think it may need other microbes to trigger fruiting) and break up the rest of the cakes to mix with the soaked and sterilized/pasteurized wood dowels/wood chip mulch. the reason i recommend going this route is it'll take about the same amount of time or even be a little faster to get your plugs ready it will conserve your culture(when your done give the capped syringe a good wipe with some rubbing alcohol and double or triple bag it and stick it in the back of your fridge) as it only takes a few drops to get a cake to go and then adding 1 crushed cake of active an "running" myc will give your plugs thousands of inoculation points also growing the cakes lets you fruit a few looooong before your logs are done and in a hobby like this that little boost when you see your first pins forming and then blowing up into nice fat delicious mushies can help a lot remember contaminations to every one now and then as long as its a couple jars out of 6-12 your doing good

i hope that didn't sound preachy or anything i just want to help people maximize their chances for success

Last summer I bought Winecap mushroom spawn from Field & Forest in Peshtigo, WI, and mixed it with a bale of straw that I had dampened and strewn to a bed size of about 5X6 feet. Didn't chop or pasteurize the straw. It was so easy, it was ridiculous. I did this after frost danger had passed here in northern Wisconsin. Covered the bed with clear plastic for a few weeks, then uncovered for remainder of summer. Got LOADS of mushrooms all summer long. They were growing in filtered partial sunlight and I just made a point to keep the straw damp. The Winecaps are so mild, they almost taste like butter to me. Not the most flavorful compared to shiitake, but very good production for a very small effort. My favorite was just to slice them in half lengthwise (the stems are edible too!) and sautee them in a bit of butter and garlic, maybe some onions, and pile on top of a grass fed beef burger. MMMMMMM!

This spring the bed looks flattened to about an inch -- I'm wondering if they'll return or if the frost kills the spawn. Should I add more straw on top? Buy more spawn and straw and start over? Ideas anyone?

yea out door cultivation is a lot simpler but if you can make your own spawn then your ahead of the game eg one $20 culture can last nearly forever and nocc up tons of substrate

Tanniim, in your opinion what is the best "how to" source, book or website for learning more about it?

the best in my opinion would be to join a forum like shroomotopia.net (<----best one i've found;) http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ or https://mycotopia.net/forums/ now the main focus of most online mushroom community is going to be psilocybe cubensis now i'm not going to get into whether you should or should grow magic mushrooms but there are sub forums for edibles and the teks are way more valuable than any book and if you don't quite understand something you can ask and some one will help you out (mind you on shroomery or myco they can be a little blunt about using the search engine first but thats cause they are freaking huge active boards ) another great thing about joining these forums is when you get some funny colored stuff coming up in one of your jars you can share a pic and find out if its a contaminate or just some metabolite also once you have made friends and made enough posts you can get/trade spores and cultures(cultures of edibles only) usually for free or for the price of sending a SASE. other than that Mycelium running: how mushrooms can help save the world is a great book lots of good info and pics that will make you drool but its not really a cultivation guide most of his other books are a lil out dated on the cultivation side worth reading but you'll get better step by baby step advise from the forums um the lets grow mushrooms videos from roger rabbit are very good the preveiws are on youtube you can usually find the full vids with google or torrenting them but they are worth buying

when i remember what HD has my old photos(or when i start a new batch) I am going to do a full write up of a couple of teks PF, Grain spawn, fruiting etc

YEAH! im new to shroomotopia and somebody has already offered to send me free spores, thats where i am getting the three varieties that i am going to start with, i am excited about all of them the enoki i think will have an awesome surreal look to it, while the wine cap will have a natural beauty growing in the wood chips and the blue oyster fruits just look awesome when they are young and tiny!
i really cant wait until they get here, i guess i actually do have a pressure cooker in the house, now whether or not i get to use it... thats another story:)
so ig i'll update my farm thread whenever i get to preparing my jars...
if properly sanitized, after placing the lid on the jar, how long until the pegs would no longer be sterile?

if properly sterilized and with good lids more or less indefinitely though it depends on what kind of lid you make a plain solid lid will stay sterile and keep its moisture content but is not that good for growing cause mushies need to breath just like people I prefer a single hole in the middle stuffed with poly fil(synthetic pillow stuffing) gor the gas exchange and making self healing injection ports out of high temp silicone with this setup it'll stay clean but eventually they will dry up some of course if the first thing you did with your syringe was make up a pint or quart of your own LC then its not really a problem just give it a lil extra LCas long as you don't get it too wet cause then you swing things into bacterial range. but are you really going to just shoot spores onto the plugs? it can work but it'll be slow and that can favor contams at the bare minimum i would add in some soaked grains (my preference is popcorn or WBS over wheat or rye but thats just me) the spores will germinate the same rate but they will tear into the grain and then each grain becomes a strike force invading into the wood but hey experimenting is half the fun I've had issues with just going spores or even just LC straight to wood doesn't mean you will just don't skip the pressure cooker 90min@15psi minimum can't wait to see your boomers and just wait till your partner finds you in the kitchen loading up jars of poo lol this hobby is addictive and will make you do all kinds of strange things PM me your SN on shroomotopia and
i'll add ya to my freinds list I've been inactive over there for a while but thinking of running a few jars of this and that maybe if we can get a few more people on this board going we could set up a free spores/culture ring or something

Nancy Dobrinski wrote:Last summer I bought Winecap mushroom spawn from Field & Forest in Peshtigo, WI, and mixed it with a bale of straw that I had dampened and strewn to a bed size of about 5X6 feet. Didn't chop or pasteurize the straw. It was so easy, it was ridiculous. I did this after frost danger had passed here in northern Wisconsin. Covered the bed with clear plastic for a few weeks, then uncovered for remainder of summer. Got LOADS of mushrooms all summer long. They were growing in filtered partial sunlight and I just made a point to keep the straw damp. The Winecaps are so mild, they almost taste like butter to me. Not the most flavorful compared to shiitake, but very good production for a very small effort. My favorite was just to slice them in half lengthwise (the stems are edible too!) and sautee them in a bit of butter and garlic, maybe some onions, and pile on top of a grass fed beef burger. MMMMMMM!

This spring the bed looks flattened to about an inch -- I'm wondering if they'll return or if the frost kills the spawn. Should I add more straw on top? Buy more spawn and straw and start over? Ideas anyone?

Nancy, I live in Oregon, zone 8, and I've successfully overwintered a strain of Winecap (King Stropharia) that I bought from F & F several years ago. I've naturalized this species in several place throughout my main orchard and garden on wood chips and straw. I just pile on more chips or straw every fall and spring to keep it going. I'm not sure if this one will survive in your climate, but you can check around for mycelium by digging around the beds and looking around carefully. Winecap mycelium is white and has a distinctive "fragrance signature" that I've learned to recognize. I spread this one around by transferring mycelium into fresh Doug-fir wood chip mulch beds underneath fruit bushes and trees. This strain is aggressive and converts chips into soil.

Thanks for the tip. I raked the edges of the old bed to tidy things up and did smell a pungent mushroom odor (YUM!) So I think I'll just take your advice and pile more damp straw on top and see what happens. No sense paying for more spawn if it's already colonized there. GREAT suggestion you made to lift some of the bed to other locations around the yard/woods. I'm definitely going to try this. Thanks for the quick reply.

Tannim Kyraxx wrote:if properly sterilized and with good lids more or less indefinitely though it depends on what kind of lid you make a plain solid lid will stay sterile and keep its moisture content but is not that good for growing cause mushies need to breath just like people I prefer a single hole in the middle stuffed with poly fil(synthetic pillow stuffing) gor the gas exchange and making self healing injection ports out of high temp silicone with this setup it'll stay clean but eventually they will dry up some of course if the first thing you did with your syringe was make up a pint or quart of your own LC then its not really a problem just give it a lil extra LCas long as you don't get it too wet cause then you swing things into bacterial range. but are you really going to just shoot spores onto the plugs? it can work but it'll be slow and that can favor contams at the bare minimum i would add in some soaked grains (my preference is popcorn or WBS over wheat or rye but thats just me) the spores will germinate the same rate but they will tear into the grain and then each grain becomes a strike force invading into the wood but hey experimenting is half the fun I've had issues with just going spores or even just LC straight to wood doesn't mean you will just don't skip the pressure cooker 90min@15psi minimum can't wait to see your boomers and just wait till your partner finds you in the kitchen loading up jars of poo lol this hobby is addictive and will make you do all kinds of strange things PM me your SN on shroomotopia and
i'll add ya to my freinds list I've been inactive over there for a while but thinking of running a few jars of this and that maybe if we can get a few more people on this board going we could set up a free spores/culture ring or something

thanks(i really don't like your "silly english" block stuff paul...just sayin) for the advice man, im a complete newb to mushrooms, i had noticed holes filled with silicone on some of the threads over at shroomotopia, wasn't sure why they did it, i haven't been super active over at shroomotopia just because it doesn'y seem to get as much action as other forums that i frequent
i'll have to learn quite a bit more while i wait for all my spores but ill get there eventually...

the year the silicone is just so when you can stick the needle in without having to worry about taping over the holes and such it may be over kill but after you've had a whole spawn run go get taken over by contams you get on the suspenders belt and second belt band wagon there are a lot of ways you can go about all of this i think thats part of what makes it such an addictive hobby.

silly english?