drake schutt

Mound culture should work well. I think A. blazei and subfreunescens are the same species.

Horse poo will be fine, just make sure that it is not totally saturated. And that its dried out before you use it, that is you need to rehydrate it. I ran into problems because I over hydrated it and the mycelium could not breathe. Oh, and this may be the most delicious mushroom Ever!

there's really only one way to find out if anything will work- try a small scale test. i would try some oyster mushrooms first. there are commercial spawn suppliers and hobby spawn suppliers.

Depends on what you grow and where you are. Blue oysters will fruit pretty much year round. But obviously nothing much grows in the dead of winter. you really need an insulated and climate controlled space if you want to grow year round. And you might need to switch from cool loving to warm loving species to keep costs down.

dan long wrote:I have a fish tank with a submersed heater to keep the humidity high, the light out.and the tempature at 26. The weather, however is 20 during the day. If i moved the basket outside with a clear bag over the top.and.misted 3x per day and the tempature (maybe) drops below 15, is the basket likely to pin? Is therea anrother way to initiate pinning?

it's pretty strain dependent, but if the temp dips down to 15 then yeah it should pin, all other things being OK.

Derick Greenly wrote:It'll be a J-tube, certainly. I'll be working closely on the cooktop most times it's in use and be happy to feed to suit my needs.

As for Drake's caution, I do thank you. But my thought for a little while now has been: grain bags in anyplace but a filtered, clean incubation room? A touchy nuisance! Who needs it? My work will consist of:

-Grain spawn in jars (I can hold enough grain spawn in both arms to spawn enough substrate to half-fill this space and then spawn a mess of logs. Half gallon and quart jars will do fine, and reliably.
-Sawdust substrate bags, straw substrate bags and sawdust spawn bags for logs and rafts outdoors (this is where my use of "spawn" maybe threw you off).

I have previously and successfully grown many jars of Liquid culture and grain spawn in a drafty area with a nice fat spore load. Please let me know if you'd still worry about sawdust in bags in an environment like this. I suppose my observation of (other people's) Stropharia, Shiitake, Oyster and Elm on pasteurized substrate in (essentially) humidified semi-outdoor conditions has instilled quite a confidence in me in this regard.

no it's really just spawn that's the problem since it's so nutritious, and you're expanding it, and the membrane seperating it from the outside world is a micron or two thick. Your sawdust bags should be fine as long as you don't plan on expanding them in sterile cultivation. what happens is a few spores can get sucked in the bag, and start growing, even though you can't see it the mold can be there.

Derick Greenly wrote:Ahoy!

For the combined purposes of: (1) spawn production beyond what a bedroom closet can handle; and (2) season-extending indoor production of select species of fungi (in reusable containers-don't you worry!), I intend to repurpose our defunct silo foundation room and adjoining "feed room" as a growroom and mycological lycaeum. Pooling from E&E's annex plan and the BIG BOOK, I'd like to install a rocket mass heater which spans both rooms, thus heating the growing area and running spawn-heating vessels using the readily available wood fuel of our Great Lakes biome. As shown in this picture, my intend is to have the feed tube and barrel just inside the work room, passing the ducting through into the spawn house, around one of the 2 monolithic walls, back into the work room, up and away! The bench will look like a flattened quarter-round tucked against the wall. I accept that I'll have to step over the thing repeatedly. I intend to use the warmer (inner) area for spawn run, the 2nd warmest area (RH outside) for fruiting (this means it should be closed off to contain a humidity spike, yes?) and the barely-heated area for either finished-spawn holding or to become my clean-room/lab.

I would put my lab and flow hood out in the workroom, but its ability to be kept clean and still is a distant second to the spawnhouse. Thoughts on this matter are welcome.

The old silo above will be sealed off by means of silicone applied over the edges of the steel door which opens through the ceiling.

Thoughts? Glaring flaws? Where will the concrete room fall in the thermal mass/heat sink/heat robber spectrum? 8 inches thick on all sides, I believe. Any cleaning concerns with cob at ~100% RH for several months? Will the residual old corn, of which I'll probably never scour away all traces, present an insurmountable contamination spore load?

Thanks in advance!
Derick

if you plan on using filter patch bags for spawn then you should probably just save a lot of heartache and quit now. you will more than likely become very frustrated, quickly, with throwing out all of your hard work. I would know as I used a straw insulated room as an incubation chamber. Jars might work fine. Substrate bags might work fine. But grain spawn in filter patch bags will probably not. A high spore load and temperature swings is going to push spores into your bags. Even if you can't see them at the time of spawning, they will germinate and ruin your substrate. Since jar filters are thicker, you can probably get away with them. Or, if you can keep the temperatures +/- 5-10 degrees, you would probably be OK.

or you could spend the big bucks and use mycelia/saco2 bags. if anything nasty shows up in them, you put it there

I too got different varieties. I enjoyed the small berries but the large ones never ripened. The small ones fall off when ripe and have super delicate skin that bursts very easily. I thought it was because I was playing with gibberellic acid in the kitchen since the giant ones looked like mutants but I guess not.

I know a Dutch mushroom farmer that uses a modified Jean pain mound that I hope to implement on my farm. He uses hot compost, chicken manure added to wood chips and sawdust. 300ft pex in compost in an IBC tote. He uses several of these in series, with false bottoms for aeration. Water or glycol is circulated thru the system to radiator coils and panels in his grow rooms. Hope that helps.