Joshua Frank

Same question, but now about these Lion's Mane fruits:

I'm building garden beds and I got a packet of this stuff:

https://eartheasy.com/eco-wood-treatment/#spec-id

which is said to be a non-toxic, zero-VOC wood preservative. I used it this weekend and will know if a few years if it's any good at preserving wood. But one thing I know is that it's expensive, $20-$30 for a two ounce packet, which makes a gallon of wash. This is comparable to other non-toxic wood treatments, but still really costly.

I asked the manufacturer what's in it and they said "a combination of minerals" and that "it's been used over in Europe for many years as a non toxic wood preservative". They sent me the MSDS, which has more information, but not the actual ingredients, which are a "trade secret". The pH is 3.7.

Can anyone make a guess what this stuff is?

For what it's worth, I cooked them up last night with butter, shallots, and good salt and they were delicious, and I seem to still be here.

Ian Påf wrote:May I ask the name of the spawn producer?

Sure. The Mushroom Lab. (https://themushroomlab.co)

This is going to sound silly, but out of an abundance of caution...

I have grown pink oyster mushrooms by buying spawn from a legit seeming vendor online and injecting it into a bag of hardwood sawdust, letting the mycellium run, then fruit, and behold:



If you try to grow pink oyster mushrooms and get something that looks like this, I'm fairly confident that they are in fact pink oyster mushrooms. But since mushrooms can kill you, I want to ask if there is any way this could be anything else that could be dangerous.

Nick Williams wrote:That's generally considered achieved at about 250 F.

I don't have a pressure cooker, but I do have an InstantPot, which is said to hit 10 to 12 psi above sea level pressure and reach 239°F to 245°F.

Would it be sufficient, do you think, to leave it at that temperature for 90 minutes or so?

Nick Williams wrote:you'll want to STERILIZE, not just pasteurize

Do you have any guidance on the difference here? Is it just a matter of hotter or longer in the pressure cooker, or some essentially different procedure?

While cleaning out the back of the pantry I found several pounds of whole grain flours (wheat, oat, etc) that expired a while ago. I don't think they're suitable for human consumption anymore, but I'm wondering if they could be used to grow mushrooms.

But I'm not finding anything online about doing this. I do see people propagating mushroom spawn on grain, but this is usually with the whole grain, which you soak, sterilize, and innoculate. If you tried adding water to flour, you'd get dough, and I don't think it would work.

Does anyone have any suggestions on this?

Hmm, that doesn't sound promising. In the transplants I've seen, they do it without pruning, and with full foliage, which I guess makes sense because the plant needs its leaves to recover from the transplant.

But I believe you can also cut rhododendron right back to the trunk and it will regrow.

Would it make sense to do this, wait a year, and then transplant when the tree is much smaller? Would that work?

I've got a large planting of mature rhododendron that needs to be moved, because it's against my house and causing problems. I don't want to just remove it, because it's quite healthy, so I'd like to transplant it somewhere else. But it's quite big, with root branches as thick as my leg.

I've watched some videos online where they dig up rhododendron, but only fairly small ones, and even then some of the guys in the videos are using heavy equipment like forklifts.

Is there any way to do this with hand tools?