our first "home grown" mushrooms

Wife and I picked up a grow your own oyster mushrooms kit at Home Depot on impulse. about two weeks later, we will be harvesting the first flush today.
Have the kit starter block in a dish pan and are adding coffee grounds around it to give the mycelium some expansion room. Hoping to keep this little experiment going for awhile.

Well done! They look great - you guys must be proud

We bought one of those at home depot on impulse last week too. Looks good!

You're on the ladder!
JOhn S
PDX OR

And they were yummy in dinner. sliced the caps from the stems, diced the stems and started them sauteeing in butter before adding the caps. Figured, rightly, that the thicker stems would take a bit longer to cook. Shredded some left over roadt chicken, a bit of salad mix in the bottom of the bowl as a base, wilted/sauteed some leaf spinach in the mushroom butter. All together with a bit of salt and pepper.

Passed muster with the wife, who likes button and portabello but does not like shitake.

Hoping we will see more growth. Would be fun to turn the little kit block into a mushroom colony

And John, are we on a ladder, or digging ourselves deeper into the hole? 😃

Very nice!

I would be careful with the amount of coffee grounds you add at once. These are also a very good culture medium for all kinds of molds. From my experience coffee grounds kept wet at room temperature take about 3-5 days to be moldy. Oysters on the other hand normally take about 1-2 days to really start growing into the new substrate and then they can reach a growth of about 1cm/day. I personally would take a small part of the colonized substrate and feed it in a separate container, only with small amounts of new substrate every few days.

Or you could also make some sterile substrate jars and clone them. It's really not that hard, especially with oysters

Best regards

Florian, thank you for your well taken reminder about coffee grounds and molds. In a sense, this is a bit of an experiment in how much we can get away with in being lazy about it

Even so, you are quite right in your cautionary words and I do appreciate their wisdom.

I have had the same problems of which Florian is reminding us. I am wondering if pasteurizing the coffee grounds at 140 to 160 degrees will decrease the likelihood of mold or will it just make coffee?
I like Peter's comment about climbing a ladder or building a hole.

John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:I have had the same problems of which Florian is reminding us. I am wondering if pasteurizing the coffee grounds at 140 to 160 degrees will decrease the likelihood of mold or will it just make coffee?
I like Peter's comment about climbing a ladder or building a hole.

John S
PDX OR

In this instance I am starting with pretty sterile grounds, largely fresh from the coffee maker, so reasonably good on that count. It is not an autoclave, but it is 200 degree or so water flushing through grounds that have been isolated and dry until that time.

However, that lasts only so long, and I am absolutely leaving these out where the oysters I want to colonize may have to out compete molds. If I were putting everything into sterilized canning jars and covering them with, say, a coffee filter tightly clamped on, I would expect less probability of contamination.