Outdoor mushroom cultivation

This fall I've harvested mycelium from 5 species of mushrooms, transferred it onto sterile substrates and stored it in the fridge after they completely colonized the substrate. By now I've stored all crops from my garden and filled my freezer with enough fish and meat for the next months, so it's time to get them out again and start producing spawn to inoculate some logs in spring.

In this thread I'm going to show you step by step how I work.

I already posted a description of how I get spawn from mushrooms in another thread
https://permies.com/t/28658/fungi/Creating-blue-oyster-spawn-blue

Some of the steps are the same, so I'll only add some pictures

STEP 1: SUBSTRATE (40% sawdust, 40% rye/wheat, 20% coffee grounds, in this case I'll mix it with compost, because I don't have enough coffee)

First you need to make a substrate. I cook the wheat until lots of the grains burst (around 30min), sieve them, and use the cooking water to soak the sawdust. leave both grain and sawdust to drip off for 10-20 minutes and then mix it with the DRY! coffee grounds.
like I said before you can use almost anything as substrate, but it's really important that your mushrooms have enough water, but all of the water should be taken up by the substrate.

STEP 2 STERILISATION

I fill this substrate into jars with a hole in the cap for pressure release during sterilisation. For a filter I use standard filter wool for aquaria.
Then I sterilise these for 60-70min in the pressure cooker.

Thanks Florian !

STEP 3 INOCULATION

The last two days I sterilised ~30L of substrate which should be enough for my new Pleurotus columbinus cultures, about 5-6m³ of beech logs, which should give a harvest of 800-1000kg of mushrooms over the next 5 years. I left them overnight, because they have to cool to room temperature before you can inoculate.



I use already colonized substrates I produced from fruit bodies like I described in the other thread, mentioned in the first post. I produced only small jars with about 100ml of spawn, but this is more than enough to inoculate the 45 jars I did today.
Last problem of contamination is air, because there are always thousands of spores flying around, but with a little water and a little help from gravity there's an easy solution for that. You need a small room (bathroom works fine for me) and a spray bottle, cleaned and filled with fresh water. If you spray all the room with water for some time (I spray for about 5 minutes in a room of only 4m²) all the contaminations will bind to these millions of small water drops and slowly sink to the floor, so you should wait another 5 minutes so everything has reached the ground before you start working. !DON'T LEAVE THE ROOM, DON'T OPEN THE DOOR, DON'T OPEN A WINDOW!


Now you clean the surface you will work on with the disinfectant (I use 70% ethanol... cheap and easily available), clean the glasses all around with the disinfectant and do the same with a spoon you should have prepared.
Take the spoon and hold it into a lighter flame for some seconds and then I scrape off the upper 5mm of mycelium in the jars and throw it out, because these parts have the highest possibility of containing contamination spores which fell through your filter. Now take small pieces of colonized substrate (the size of a grain is completely sufficient) open a jar a little bit and throw in the mycelium. I burn the spoon again after 3-5 jars to be really on the save side.

now just leave the substrate at room temperature for 3-6weeks (depending on mushroom species, jar size, temperature...) and the mycelium should have colonized the whole substrate. Now you can use this substrate to inoculate logs (or new substrates).




That's it for now... I'm going to show you how I inoculate the logs with this substrates in February. Until then I have to repeat this process for the other species and I have to purchase some nice logs. It's important to use wood from healthy trees. Also the bark should be intact.

what type of wood is best for innoculation?

Jackson Casey wrote:what type of wood is best for innoculation?

Fungi aren't all that picky about their substrate, especially when it is dead. Oyster mushrooms have even been grown on rolls of paper towels, which is pretty much 99.99% cellulose with a trace of dye and/or perfume. About the only distinction is that conifer woods support a different population of fungi than do deciduous hardwoods. That may have to do with the fact that conifers have more resins in them, which are terpene or lignin like molecules, and so they would be more natural substrates for white rot fungi than brown rot fungi.

If you are planning on growing oyster mushrooms, they show a preference for hardwoods.

Like John Elliott already said, most mushrooms aren't that picky and grow on many different types of wood, but to say the only important difference for fungi is if it's wood from conifer or deciduous trees is a bit to much of a generalization in my opinion.
Some species, like oyster mushrooms, will grow and fruit on almost anything, but many other species are a bit more picky.

Oyster mushrooms, like I already said, will grow on almost anything. I even found them wild on conifers (Silver fir, Abies alba and European spruce, Picea abies) but for some reason I've never seen them or had any success growing them on European ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

The Enoki mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) on the other hand is way more selective. Not only conifer woods, but also Quercus sp. and Castanea sativa were not even colonized when I tried it. European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus), which are great substrates for almost anything else, get colonized but don't really give mentionable yields.
Good for Enoki are soft deciduous woods like Salix sp. or Populus sp., and surprisingly it was the only species I tried that grew on Ash

Shiitake on the other hand are almost the exact opposite. They love deciduous hardwoods, especially Quercus sp. and also beech and maple
Salix and Populus didn't work well for me and yielded poorly

Pholiota nameko, Hericium coralloides and H. erinaceus work fine on beech and maple, but I didn't do any other experiments until now

Hypholoma capnoides on the other hand I use for pine and other conifers



These of course are only the combinations I tried so far, and also only with our typical Central European trees.
I mostly use beech and maple, because they are a great choice for many of the mushrooms I grow. Only for Enoki and Hypholoma capnoides I use other substrates.

Three weeks after inoculation the oyster spawn is almost ready. When the substrate is fully colonized I store the jars at 3-5°C until I'm ready to inoculate the logs, which should be delivered within the next 14 days.

Today I got a new toy to speed up the inoculation process. A drill attachment for my chainsaw

Now I can drill holes with the 3hp engine from my Jonsered



The 30mm augers and the logs should both be delivered next week, then I can start working

Most of the spawn jars are already fully colonized, only the Hericum and some of the Pleurotus jars need a little more time

Thank you for sharing this process Florian. The more people see it and understand it, the more are going to try to do it and make it happen.
John S
PDX OR

Excellent pictorial! I think this is just what people need to see how permies propagate fungi at home.
Thank you!

I'm happy you like this thread. I was hoping to show some people around here how easy mushroom cultivation can be, even if you are producing spawn yourself. It seems to me as if most people around here are a little afraid of working sterile, or even think that it isn't possible to produce sterile spawn without expensive equipment.



Today I finally got the logs (it took "a little" longer than expected) and tomorrow I'll start inoculation. The quality of the logs isn't perfect, mostly because we didn't have a cold enough winter and the bark didn't freeze properly, so it's pretty damaged. I already have a solution to this problem I'll explain within the next days when I can show some pictures too.

Florian, please consider adding your location to your profile.

Is the procedure the same for shiitakes?

Cj Verde wrote:
Is the procedure the same for shiitakes?

Shiitake spawn can be produced with exactly the same method.
Most people use small oaken branches (10-20cm) for these, but oak is hard to get around here so I'm using maple and beech as well. It works fine too, but with these woods you have to use larger diameters (25+cm). Shiitake really like heartwood and only oak has a high ratio of this in small branches.
Nice thing about small diameter logs would be the possibility of controlled fruiting by watering the wood for some time.






STEP 4: INOCULATION OF LOGS


Today I started by cutting 20% of the logs into smaller pieces of 80-100cm.

Logs of more than 40 cm in diameter were cut into pieces of 80cm, smaller ones to 100cm. 3-4 holes for spawn inoculation were drilled in each piece.

I used ~25L of Pholiota nameko spawn for a little more than 5000kg of wood

Wow, that looks like a brilliant system!

And I love the chainsaw attachment. Time to go gadget shopping me thinks

Florian Kogseder wrote:
Most people use small oaken branches (10-20cm) for these, but oak is hard to get around here so I'm using maple and beech as well. It works fine too, but with these woods you have to use larger diameters (25+cm). Shiitake really like heartwood and only oak has a high ratio of this in small branches.
Nice thing about small diameter logs would be the possibility of controlled fruiting by watering the wood for some time.

Oh! I was just preparing to cut smaller diameter logs for cultivation because the larger ones are hard to carry around. 25cm (9") doesn't seem that bad but it's borderline.

Thanks for the info.

Michael Cox wrote:Wow, that looks like a brilliant system!

And I love the chainsaw attachment. Time to go gadget shopping me thinks

There is an angle grinder/drill attachment that is awesome too:
Shiitake Express Drill Tool

Michael Cox wrote:Wow, that looks like a brilliant system!

And I love the chainsaw attachment. Time to go gadget shopping me thinks

Thanks.
The drill attachment is really nice... even with these fresh hardwoods it only takes seconds to drill a really nice, big hole

Cj Verde wrote: Oh! I was just preparing to cut smaller diameter logs for cultivation because the larger ones are hard to carry around. 25cm (9") doesn't seem that bad but it's borderline.

Thanks for the info.

A little smaller, like 20-25cm will still work, but the ones with 10-20cm didn't really work for me.

Florian,
Can you show a pic of your laying field?

This is brilliant. Thank you so much.

This is awesome! thank you for sharing and helping to demystify mushroom growing.

Cj Verde wrote:Florian,
Can you show a pic of your laying field?

I'm sorry, but I'm not really sure if I understand this term. Do you mean the area where the logs will be put up for fruiting?
If so, I'm going to show some pictures tomorrow, because until now it was all about cutting the logs, transporting them to their final location and inoculating. Tomorrow we will put up the first groups

Florian Kogseder wrote:

Cj Verde wrote:Florian,
Can you show a pic of your laying field?

I'm sorry, but I'm not really sure if I understand this term. Do you mean the area where the logs will be put up for fruiting?

Yes.

Thank you very much Florian! For the first time I feel like this is something I can do, and will do.

Today we put up 1/3 of the logs. I'm really tired and I have to be at work in some hours so further descriptions will come within the next few days, but here are some pictures

I forgot one... How about that for a mistake

How fresh do the logs need to be for the spawn to reliably get established?

We have had a bunch of trees down over the past 6 months or so and I'd like to have a go at them. Are they likely to have been already colonised and is it therefore futile to attempt?

Your compost heap looks great!

Michael Cox wrote:Are they likely to have been already colonised and is it therefore futile to attempt?

Yes. Should be newly cut.

Great pictorial Florian. It helps us to visualize what you're doing. Can you tell me what the white substrate is that the oysters in the bag are fruiting on?
Aren't the florida oysters used to a much warmer and more humid climate?
Thanks,
John S
PDX OR

Florian, do you cover them with a cloth do block the sun? Seems like an awfully open area. Also, I have read that you should put inoculated logs on the ground. Have you always done it this way? No problems with aggressive fungi taking over?

I am living in close proximity to fruit orchards and have access to all wood from the hard cuts that were made this winter.
the logs were 2 months ago and have been laying in the orchard since.
they are oddly shaped but many are 30-40 cm in diameter and 40 cm + in length.
Most of it is Apple wood with some cherry. I have seen turkey tail (trametes versicolor) growing on both trees.
I am looking for a good candidate for innoculating these logs. What Species would folks recommend for Apple and Cherry wood? Do you think that these logs have been sitting for too long to innoculate?
Thanks,
Ariel

Field and Forest has a strain of Nameko that does well on cherry wood. Turkey Tail is a great medicinal mushroom. I boil it for two hours, cut it into bolt sized strips, put olive oil and soy sauce on it and we call it "Turkey tail jerky". It tastes like beef jerky, although instead of causing cancer, it fights cancer. Fruit wood is normally too dense to grow most mushrooms on.
John S
PDX OR

I was thinking of trying Shiitakes and oysters. Shiitake because I have read that they grow well on dense wood and oysters because they are such an aggressive growing mushroom.
Anyone have any other suggestions for mushrooms that would grow well on fruit wood (namely apple and cherry)?
I have noticed that mycelium tends to run just under the bark of decomposing wood. Apple tends to have thin bark and I was thinking that wrapping the logs with a layer of corrugated cardboard might help mimic thicker bark. Ima give it a try and see what gives.

Shiitakes are known to grow poorly on fruit wood and thinly barked trees. Oysters grow well on tree wood that is not dense (poplar, alder, willow, etc. )
John S
PDX OR

How fresh do the logs need to be for the spawn to reliably get established?

Like Cj Verde already said, your logs are most probably too old and already colonized by other mushrooms
1-3 months is ok for most woods, only conifers should have more time between cutting and inoculation. I didn't inoculate a lot of conifer until now, but 3-5 months have been working good for me

Can you tell me what the white substrate is that the oysters in the bag are fruiting on?

It actually is just my usual spawn substrate (rye, sawdust, compost). It's white because of the oyster mycelium

Aren't the florida oysters used to a much warmer and more humid climate?

Yes they are, but still they are quite cold hardy. Two years ago mine survived one of the hardest winters I've ever experienced without any problem. The reason why I grow them is the time of fruiting. They produce mushrooms from April to October, whenever temperatures and humidity are ok, while my winter oysters (P. ostreatus var. columbinus) fruits from October to January

Seems like an awfully open area

Just seems like it when the shrubs and trees don't have leaves. During summer months my cultures get a maximum of 2-3 hours of sun/day. I still had good results in areas with more sun (up to 5h/day)

Have you always done it this way? No problems with aggressive fungi taking over?

I tried this for the first time two years ago. I didn't notice more contaminations on the logs put up directly compared to the ones which were stored 5-6 months without ground contact. But to be honest I didn't have a big enough sample group until now to give a reliable answer to this question

What Species would folks recommend for Apple and Cherry wood?

I only tested one apple stump some years ago, and this tree was already partially rotten when I cut it down. Still I was able to get a small harvest of Oysters from the stump. On the homepage of a german vendor of mushroom substrates I've read that Hericium erinaceus gives good results on apple

Thanks for the great answers, FLorian. Another consideration is that if you have a dense wood that is fresh like apple wood, if you chipped it, you could use it for growing many types of mushrooms because obviously chipped wood is not so dense. In addition, some species (like King Stropharia)prefer chips to logs.
John S
PDX OR

In my climate, we can't really grow mushrooms outside, but in a greenhouse or other humid space, we grow several species of oyster (grey, white, blue, pink) and also garden giant. I tend to grow on waste materials, like straw and cardboard. Here's the way we grow oysters in laundry baskets.

Chipping branches and mixing with some straw and/or sawdust can increase the rate in which the mushrooms colonize the substrate. You don't have to grow just on logs, you can grow on mulch piles, too.

In the summer it gets hot, here, and I've found that only the pink oysters and garden giants do well in those temps. In the winter, we grow the cooler oyster species.

I've seen a lot of turkey tail grow on apple wood. If you chipped the apple/cherry wood and mixed with other substrates, you could grow a wider variety of species, including oysters.

Also, don't forget that you can mix a lot of invasive species into your mushroom mix, and it'll help get rid of them without risk of spreading. Tree of Heaven is an invasive that oysters will do well on, especially if mixed with some other substrates.

For those of us in a drier/hotter climates, take a look at the mushroom biofilter concepts. If you have an aquaponics system or a pond, you can easily grow oysters using the water from those systems, and filter it at the same time: http://aquaponicsnation.com/forums/topic/8204-mushroom-biofilter/

Abe Connally wrote:In my climate, we can't really grow mushrooms outside,...

Abe where are you? Consider adding your location to your profile.

Cj Verde wrote:

Abe Connally wrote:In my climate, we can't really grow mushrooms outside,...

Abe where are you? Consider adding your location to your profile.

Chihuahuan Desert

Abe Connally wrote:

Cj Verde wrote:

Abe Connally wrote:In my climate, we can't really grow mushrooms outside,...

Abe where are you? Consider adding your location to your profile.

Chihuahuan Desert

abe- if you ever want to grow some warm weather varieties- paddy straw and milky mushrooms grow in hot climates. you would need to supplement humidity though.