New Member Introduction

Hello, my name is Dean. I've been lurking on this site for about a month and decided to join because of the friendly, polite and helpfull nature of the community. I ran accross the site by accident while researching how to grow gourmet and medicinal mushrooms.

I had never heard of permaculture before even though I do employ some of the practices. After digging through the fungi forum I looked around the site and found a wealth of information about other topics I knew nothing about. For example, rocket stoves, mass heaters, hugel culture, and interesting DIY self hacks.

I was impressed by the knowledge and sound advice given by the members growing mushrooms.  I tried to make a living growing mushrooms back in the late 80's and early 90's. I even recieved government assistance to get started. Unfortunately I failed.

I will be retiring in about two years and plan to grow a few mushrooms to supplement my pension income. I grew Oyster, Shitake and Enoki mushrooms indoors on straw or supplemented sawdust using sterile techniques. This time  I will still grow indoors but intend to focus on low tech non sterile methods outdoors. I will still build a lab to maintain cultures and grow spawn.

I have several experiments planned that I would appreciate member feedback on.  Should I start a new topic for each experiment or put all the experiments in one thread?

Right now for fun and to see if I still have "the touch" I bought some Oyster mushrooms from the store and cut the stems off. I sprayed the outside with hydrogen peroxide then ripped the stem lengthways and placed them between soaked cardboard inside a tupperware container. It worked really well. I transfered those to untreated sawdust from hardwood fuel pellets with mixed results. I need to dial in my moisturee content and get some chips to blend in.

I am looking forward to sharing my experiance with others.

Hi Dean;   Big welcome to Permies!   We like it when lurkers step out in front of the curtain!
I know absolutely nothing about growing mushrooms, other than attempting to grow psyliciban mushrooms under my bed in the 1970's  (Big failure).
I do know a fair bit about Rocket mass heater's though. So stop on by the rmh forum and we will share that info.

As far as your question of how to post about your experiments.
If you have enough info to make a thread about each experiment, then I would post individually. This leaves room for others to comment on each experiment in full