Dominik Riva

Yes, there are mushrooms that will grow on pine logs. Oysters will grow on nearly anything. If you want to find something more specialized and maybe more economically viable have a look at online catalogs selling grain spawn and plugs. Most don't use pine because hardwoods are denser and thus produce more mushroom per volume.

Little Brown Mushrooms as Paul Stamets calls them.

Hard to identify and the risk reward ratio is not worth the work for culinary use.

I'm a Linux admin by profession (at least 20% of what I do at work) and use it on the desktop since 20 years as my main driver.
If you need help or have a question just shot me a message.

Well rayon is cellulose so should be broken down by the mushrooms like the cotton but the others I don't know what will be left. It all depends on the enzymes the mushroom produces and I read that suggests the mushroom can be trained to feed on different materials.

As long as there are no heavy metals or radio active elements involved, my guess is the fruits are safe to eat.
The long molecule chains of the synthetics get broken apart and rebuild by enzymes into molecules need by the mushroom. If this process was not equivalent to say decomposing lignin or cellulose then the mushroom itself would be in big trouble.

If I remember correctly button mushrooms are secondary composers.
So they would grow on your finished compost and or aged animal manure.

Right now I have started a button mushroom kit that looks like gray cobwebs on straw and black compost that needs some added water and gets put on top.
The mycelium has grown through the compost and looks white against the black. I expect pins in about a week.

When the kit is finished I will mix it with finished compost in the garden.

A friends dad got a permanent button mushroom colony established near his compost heap in this way.

No, it will not take over the whole garden as there are other interested parties that will make sure it will stay in it's ideal niche if at all - there is constant war going on out there and your role is to play faith for trillions of organisms.

I like to add gypsum and some woody material (spend hemp straw form the gerbils and the like) to the spend coffee grounds. What is you humidity? I got a similar look when I had too dry conditions in the room.

Chris Kott wrote:I think I will be going with the clean-room setup when I go for this. It is a project for after the move out of the city, where I will actually have a room to use this way.

I don't see the logic in not going the clean-room route. I mean, I would do all the same things as if I was simply sterilising the containers. The room would just be an added barrier to contamination, and a layer of protection between my living/working space and mushroom growing.

You need to sterilise the room before you open the grow containers anyways.

There is a distinction between an clean-room and a fruiting room. The fruiting room will get filled with spores of your desired mushrooms and the clean-room needs to be devoid of any mushrooms as this is the only way to control what you are growing.
A clean-room does not need to be permanent structure as in its minimal form it can be a dust free room with a still air box to work in. The next level is using a laminar flow to work in front of.

You don't need to sterilize the room before you expose fully colonized blocks for fruiting - the last stage is quite forgiving. Clean practice is advised in a fruiting room but nothing compared to the ritualistic levels needed for a clean-room.
There is a reason mostly big labs have actual clean-room. The time it takes only to get through the airlocks is crazy. Most labs use a laminar flow hood.

Keeping the mycelium in the bag/bucket protects it a bit if the humidity is below ideal.

If you got your humidity levels dialed in, I would advice you to experiment and do a trial to figure out how your strain reacts to the different conditions.
Changing such variables can have very different results on different strains.

Also with the buckets and bags you could get longer stems because of a possible higher CO2 concentration inside of the container.
As for the humidity,  CO2 can also be controlled for the whole room.

I don't think you will get smaller mushrooms as I get a lot of pins but not every hole produces a dominant cluster. So with a free block I predict you still get the dominant clusters.
The next variable could be volume/surface ratio. If it is adversarial to free small blocks it could be necessary for big blocks.

Perhaps but if you only pasteurize not sterilize the medium I would start fruiting.
Multiplication needs to happen sterile or a high percentage will spoil with mold and bacteria.

You can't keep the grain spawn for long to do multiple batches as every opening brings the risk of contamination.
Storage time in the fridge is also not indefinite.

Work in one batch but put the first portions into sterilized mason chars with grain - use the new grain spawn to do the next batches.
Do the transfers in a still air box.