lazy, cheap inoculation?

I just picked up some oysters and would like to inoculate my compost bin with them by blending them with something they like to eat and pouring them over the contents of the bin

Could this work? If so, would cooked brown rice be a good thing to blend with them?

I know there are correct ways doing this, but those methods take time,patience, and/or money, and I am short on all three!
Im just trying to get the myciilum to spread throughout my beds, I don't care about the shroons persay...

Just put it through the blender and pour it on the compost pile. Inoculating a compost or wood chip pile is a whole lot easier than actually trying to grow a new batch of mushrooms. Since you don't really care what fungus is breaking down your biomass, you don't have to observe a lot of the cleanliness that goes on in mushroom raising.

Great! I wonder I f I can score a bunch of rotting mushrooms from the local grocery...
Till then, my shroon smoothy , could be a great boon to the compost.
Thanks for the knowledge!

You can always ethically harvest some duff/litter from under trees in a natural type setting.

I inoculate my compost piles, wood chip piles, sawdust mulch and potting soil piles all the time with spore emulsion/slurry made from various species of mushrooms including Black Morels, Blonde Morels, Shaggy Mane, King Stropharia, Prince Agaricus, Almond Agaricus, etc. I just take old mushrooms (or wash water), toss them in a bucket. add warm water, a tablespoon molasses and a pinch of salt. I stir it up and a few days later I spray or dump or sprinkle this stuff all over the appropriate substrates. I just inoculated a bunch of newly potted and grafted baby apple and pear trees this way with Blonde Morel spores. But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:I inoculate my compost piles, wood chip piles, sawdust mulch and potting soil piles all the time with spore emulsion/slurry made from various species of mushrooms including Black Morels, Blonde Morels, Shaggy Mane, King Stropharia, Prince Agaricus, Almond Agaricus, etc. I just take old mushrooms (or wash water), toss them in a bucket. add warm water, a tablespoon molasses and a pinch of salt. I stir it up and a few days later I spray or dump or sprinkle this stuff all over the appropriate substrates. I just inoculated a bunch of newly potted and grafted baby apple and pear trees this way with Blonde Morel spores. But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

where do you find fresh almond agaricus? I think there is only one commercial grower in the whole USA! You certainly are not finding them wild if you live in Oregon as they are a tropical species. I going to give their cultivation a go this summer but don't have high hopes.

I think oysters would fare better in a cellulose rich environment rather than kitchen scraps that the OP was talking about.

@William, take what you can get that's free, but I don't know how effective rotten oyster mushrooms would be. They are almost always rotten by the time they hit the shelves here, since they are trucked in 2000 miles from cali and weeks old. Except for the Hokto brand, they always stay fresh some how.

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote: But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

Patience, patience, why do you want to heat up a compost pile fast? Can't you wait for the fungi to break it down at ambient temperatures?

drake schutt wrote:

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:I inoculate my compost piles, wood chip piles, sawdust mulch and potting soil piles all the time with spore emulsion/slurry made from various species of mushrooms including Black Morels, Blonde Morels, Shaggy Mane, King Stropharia, Prince Agaricus, Almond Agaricus, etc. I just take old mushrooms (or wash water), toss them in a bucket. add warm water, a tablespoon molasses and a pinch of salt. I stir it up and a few days later I spray or dump or sprinkle this stuff all over the appropriate substrates. I just inoculated a bunch of newly potted and grafted baby apple and pear trees this way with Blonde Morel spores. But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

where do you find fresh almond agaricus? I think there is only one commercial grower in the whole USA! You certainly are not finding them wild if you live in Oregon as they are a tropical species. I going to give their cultivation a go this summer but don't have high hopes.

I think oysters would fare better in a cellulose rich environment rather than kitchen scraps that the OP was talking about.

I grow Almond Agaricus indoors in boxes on fresh leached cow manure compost inoculated with fresh spawn from Field and Forest Products (fieldforest.net). There is another thread on here where I describe how I grow this species. It is delicious and is one of the best mushrooms I've ever tried! (By spraying spore emulsion of this one, I'm hoping that perhaps someday a new strain of Almond Agaricus that is adapted to Oregon's climate will eventually take hold in my garden- just like some other cultivated mushrooms become naturalised in their new environments.) Until then, I'll just keep growing it indoors!

https://permies.com/t/33807/fungi/Growing-Portabellows-wild

John Elliott wrote:

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote: But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

Patience, patience, why do you want to heat up a compost pile fast? Can't you wait for the fungi to break it down at ambient temperatures?

John, I like finished "hot" compost (activated by actinomycetes) for veggies, "cold" compost (activated by edible saprophytic fungi and then inoculated by mycorrhizal fungi) for trees and shrubs. I "customize" my compost according to the plants, the substrate/compost and the fungi that grow best with each other. Sometimes cool things happen- I've got a cute little landscape Morel (Morchella importuna) in my yard now, right next to where I sun-dried a bunch of morels last year and where I dumped a bunch of morel spore emulsion. What's frustrating to me is that there is still only one morel in that spot after three weeks!

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:I inoculate my compost piles, wood chip piles, sawdust mulch and potting soil piles all the time with spore emulsion/slurry made from various species of mushrooms including Black Morels, Blonde Morels, Shaggy Mane, King Stropharia, Prince Agaricus, Almond Agaricus, etc. I just take old mushrooms (or wash water), toss them in a bucket. add warm water, a tablespoon molasses and a pinch of salt. I stir it up and a few days later I spray or dump or sprinkle this stuff all over the appropriate substrates. I just inoculated a bunch of newly potted and grafted baby apple and pear trees this way with Blonde Morel spores. But to really heat up a compost pile fast, just pour a bucket of fresh urine on it- that will get it going faster than any mushroom- this is really cheap and easy inoculation! Hope this helps!

Details please! This sounds like an excellent way for aspiring lazy people to get some free mushrooms! How old can these mushrooms be and still be viable? When you say "a few days" how many is that? What purpose does the molasses and salt serve?

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:What's frustrating to me is that there is still only one morel in that spot after three weeks!

That's 100% more than there would be if that spot was in my yard.

For spore emulsion, I use mushrooms that appear to have matured to a point in which they have started forming spores- for example, with Agaricus species, the gills will turn to a chocolate brown color when they're ready. Old, rotten mushrooms are less viable. Fresher spores are better than real old ones. I use molasses as a nutrient to entice the spores into germinating and getting them to start growing. The salt is used to inhibit bacterial competitors. Here's a recipe that I've adapted from Mycelium Running, a book by Paul Stamets:

1. Add 1/4 teaspoon sea salt and 1 tablespoon molasses to one gallon water. Mix thoroughly. (You can also use sugar instead of molasses and you can also heat up the broth to dissolve the molasses and salt better.)
2. Pour the broth into a 5 gallon bucket.
3. Add several mature mushrooms, the wash water from morels or a bunch of spore prints from glass plates, etc., to the bucket.
4. Add more water, cover the bucket and leave it between 50-70 F. degrees.
5. Shake and stir the bucket a few times a day.
6. After 48 hours you can pour, spray or sprinkle your spore emulsion onto the appropriate substrates. Freshly prepared substrates inoculated during a rainy spell will usually have the best chance for success. For example, I sprinkle black morel spore emulsion onto biochar/burn pile sites around my farm. I like to inoculate bare root fruit trees by this method by dipping them into a spore emulsion bucket of yellow morel spores or dyemaker's false puffball- both of these mushrooms form beneficial mycorrhizae with apples, plums, etc. King stropharia emulsion can be poured onto woodchips or sawdust mulch. Landscape morel spores (Morchella rufobrunnea or M. importuna) can be sprinkled onto bark mulch or fresh hardwood chip beds. These two morel species also seem to like cardboard, too.

In fact, any time I collect mushrooms, if any of the mushrooms are too trashed to eat or could be contaminated by roadside chemicals, then I use them in spore emulsion projects. Some species are much easier to grow by this method than others. Inedible mycorrhizal mushrooms like dye-makers false puffball and stalked puffballs are easy to grow by this method. Edible mycorrhizal mushrooms like king boletes- not so easy!! Success is never guaranteed, but this method is cheap and easy. Good luck out there! I'd like to hear of other people who have had success with this method.

Any opinions on using the described method above of using edible mushrooms to inoculate tree roots vs the fungal inoculates available from the store? My focus is on tree health more than an edible yield of morels, but cheap and lazy work too.

Also, if a bag of inoculate is expired in 2013, how likely will it be completely useless?

Any input is greatly appreciated!