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My first mushroom attempt

Joshua States

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Location: 6a Alpine Southwest USA

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posted 4 months ago

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I decided to try growing some mushrooms this year.
I got some Wine Cap spawn.

And an Italian oyster block.

I prepped a bed on the outskirts of the greenhouse with some partial sun and followed the directions, clear down to dirt, spread straw, spread wine cap spawn, cover with more straw and finally cover with wood chips. That's the 4x4 area in the foreground. The oyster bloc got cut in half and buried just below the surface, covered with dirt and wood chips. That's the area in the back part of the bed.

I also took some wine cap spawn and spread it along the side of one of the beds in my new outdoor garden.
Wish me luck!

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Anne Miller

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posted 4 months ago

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Thanks for sharing, great project!

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Burton Sparks

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posted 4 months ago

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Joshua, how exciting! I've done a winecap bed, but only oyster in logs.

Joshua States wrote:The oyster bloc got cut in half and buried just below the surface, covered with dirt and wood chips.

You don't spread the oyster spawn like winecap? I couldn't tell from their website.
Is the thought that the beds get moisture from rain, or greenhouse runoff?

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Joshua States

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posted 4 months ago

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Burton Sparks wrote:Joshua, how exciting! I've done a winecap bed, but only oyster in logs.

Joshua States wrote:The oyster bloc got cut in half and buried just below the surface, covered with dirt and wood chips.

You don't spread the oyster spawn like winecap? I couldn't tell from their website.
Is the thought that the beds get moisture from rain, or greenhouse runoff?

This company sells Italian Oyster block in a few varieties: some is spreadable spawn, log inoculation, bucket kits, fruiting blocks and plant & grow blocks.
https://northspore.com/search?q=Italian+Oyster&type=product&options%5Bprefix%5D=last

I wanted to buy the plant & grow block but accidently ordered the fruiting block. The fruiting block is "side fruiting" which means you are supposed to leave it in the bag and cut one of the sides open. The mushrooms grow out the side of the bag. It doesn't matter which side you choose. I wasn't going to grow these indoors, so I decided to take the chance and treat the fruiting block like two smaller plant & grow blocks. I cut it in half, turned each side up, and planted them. We will see what happens.

The beds will likely get watered by rain and by hand until I get my rain catchment system set up. I live in a very arid climate.

Burton Sparks

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posted 4 months ago

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Joshua, now I'm more interested in hearing the updates! Keep us posted.

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Eric Hanson

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posted 3 months ago

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Joshua,

Very Nice!

You have a nice wood chip bed for your mushroom spawn. If you want to encourage them a little more, maybe find some straw and cover with 1-2 inches of light, fluffy straw--don't overdo it. This is just enough to keep the wood chips damp.

But again, these look very good.

Good Luck,

Eric

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Joshua States

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posted 3 months ago

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Eric Hanson wrote:Joshua,
Very Nice!
You have a nice wood chip bed for your mushroom spawn. If you want to encourage them a little more, maybe find some straw and cover with 1-2 inches of light, fluffy straw--don't overdo it. This is just enough to keep the wood chips damp.
But again, these look very good.
Good Luck,
Eric

Thanks Eric,
IDK if you caught it, but the spawn is scattered between two layers of straw that came with the spawn. The only straw I have access to is the bulk stuff from stores like Tractor supply and other animal feed retailers. This contains seeds and I have vowed never to use it as mulch again. I spend way too much time weeding straw out of my beds. I have a good supply of oak leaves and pine needles though. I am using this as mulch in my new outdoor garden. Perhaps some of that would do?

Beds-1.JPG

Eric Hanson

Steward and Man of Many Mushrooms

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posted 3 months ago

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Joshua,

Leaves should work just fine for these purposes. The mushrooms should be able to digest the leaves, but maybe not as quickly as straw, but who cares? Basically, you just want to keep direct sun off the bed in order to regulate moisture.

Good insticts!

Eric

Some places need to be wild

Barbara Simoes

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Location: Middlebury, Vermont zone 5a

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posted 1 month ago

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Don't get discouraged if there isn't a flush right away. First the mycelium needs to get established. Here, I get two flushes, one in spring and one in late summer/fall. They can be hard to see at first, especially with the leaf camouflage! I'm betting you won't have the spring crop, but the fall one should be bountiful. I also want to say that they don't necessarily stay where you put the spawn because the mycelium runs underground, it can end up wherever it darn well pleases!

Yeardly Arthur

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Location: Half acre on a hill in Central Alabama, Zone 8a and 8b

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posted 1 month ago

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I tried growing oyster and wine cap mushrooms with very little success, only to discover that neither one likes pine or oak debris as a growth medium. (We mostly have oaks on our property, and the sawmill down the road offers an endless supply of pine sawdust.) Since I have tons of oak, I also invested in shiitake spawn, drilling and plugging and dusting a massive oak logpile backfilled with oak leaves. After a year, I got nuthin'.

The wine cap spawn seemed to be hanging on in the mulch under the arbor, where I had intentionally been keeping a thin mycelium alive on wet cardboard and coffee grounds, adding chopped sticks of peach, elm, ash, and whatever other non-pine debris I could find. More than a year of pampering finally rewarded me with a half-dozen snail-nibbled shrooms.

In one last optimistic gasp, I tried inoculating my compost-filled winter hotbox (lovingly nicknamed 'The Conestoga Wagon') with Almond Agaricus spawn. Maybe something will come of this in another year or two.

Wine-Caps.jpg

Conestoga_Wagon.jpg

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Joshua States

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posted 1 month ago

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Yeardly Arthur wrote:I tried growing oyster and wine cap mushrooms with very little success, only to discover that neither one likes pine or oak debris as a growth medium.

That's kind of depressing because I live in a pine & oak forest. I tried to use mostly oak for the wood chips. I always thought that mushrooms preferred hardwood over softwood, and the website literature specifically says that hard woods are better.

@Barbara Simoes, Thanks for the encouragement. I was thinking I wouldn't get anything this spring. Sure enough, nothing yet!

I recently acquired a pink oyster block that a friend had no room for. I don't have any room for it either, but she also gave me her "fruiting box" to keep it in. Supposedly, these will start producing right in the bag it came shipped in.

Pink-Oyster-block.JPG

Yeardly Arthur

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Location: Half acre on a hill in Central Alabama, Zone 8a and 8b

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posted 1 month ago

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[
That's kind of depressing because I live in a pine & oak forest.

I found it very discouraging. Apparently wine caps like every other hardwood but oak. That said, I like to find a way through a problem rather than around it. Besides the hot box/worm farm, I have another big wooden casket that holds sawdust, cardboard and grass clippings that I tell myself is generating potting soil. It also holds whatever was left in the bags of mushroom spawn that failed elsewhere. So far it does have persistent mycelial threads that run pretty deep, so I'm just leaving it alone other than keeping it wettish and dumping coffee grounds on it now and then. The experts say that ALL mushrooms are coffee addicts. Who knows, we might get lucky and develop a persistent colony of something tasty.

In the meantime, I'm watching out for all of the fungi that grow in and on this little patch of ground, taking photos and checking in with the experts whenever something new pops up. Found a couple of edibles that way, so that's encouraging all by itself. Good luck!

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Yeardly Arthur

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Location: Half acre on a hill in Central Alabama, Zone 8a and 8b

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posted 1 month ago

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In the meantime, I'm watching out for all of the fungi that grow in and on this little patch of ground, taking photos and checking in with the experts whenever something new pops up. Found a couple of edibles that way, so that's encouraging all by itself.

Just following up. I finally got my hands on one of these beauties before the squirrels and raccoons and slugs and earwigs devour them. Looking out from the kitchen window, we see them come up in the lawn, but they're always gone by noon, with very little debris left over from the feast. They look like bright red Easter eggs hiding in the grass, opening up (when they get the chance) to wide orange caps with yellow borders.

Experts tell me they are a newly described species, Amanita angelica, one of the American Caesar shrooms that used to be included with Amanita jacksonii. Since they are in the Amanita genus with a number of deadly cousins, many sources are hesitant to call them edible. I will leave that conclusion to those with a broad enough fund of knowledge to decide with a reasonable measure of certainty. Be careful out there.

AmanitaAngelica.jpg

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Joao Winckler

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posted 1 month ago

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Wine caps are pretty forgiving once established, the mycelium just needs time to run. The pine/oak issue is real for some species but wine caps are wood-generalists, they should be fine with mixed hardwood chips. The comment about fall flush is spot on though, don't expect much the first season, it's mostly underground work happening. Mine took until the second autumn before I got anything worth harvesting.

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Thekla McDaniels

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posted 1 month ago

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And, has this already been said? Winecaps aka king stropharia benefit by the presence of mycelia of other species, and the presence of soil organisms. Making them perfect for permaculturists and food forests.

One thing though, I learned through fungi perfecti—- it’s not a good idea to eat them every day. They’re not toxic but the digestive systems of some folks are distressed by too frequent ingestion.

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Phil Stevens

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posted 1 month ago

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My kūmara patch produced lots of winecaps this year. They mostly shut down as autumn progressed, but other mushrooms were popping everywhere, including some big basket fungi. When I was digging the kūmara I must have unearthed at least a dozen "eggs" that were probably on the verge of bursting to create baskets...too bad, but the harvest was the priority.

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