I have a market garden on Vancouver Island, I am wanting to innoculate most of my beds with King Stropharia this spring.... I have 60cc of liquid spawn on its way in the mail.... It is currently mid Dec and I am wondering how best to go about stretching out this spawn.... Has anyone ever attempted innoculating compost piles directly with liquid King Stropharia spawn? I have about 50 beds that are 2.5ft wide by 25ft long that I would like to innoculate this spring.... Any ideas of best ways to make this happen.... Also does anyone have a good substrate recipe that works for King Stropharia, and any idea if I should go from liquid to grain first then grain
to sawdust, and finally sawdust spawn sprinkled over garden beds and covered with 1 inch of compost, and then adding compost as needed to keep it right around 1 inch deep at all times.
My current plan: 60cc liquid spawn
1. 10cc into a 3.5 x 3.5 ft compost pile - it was a thermophilic pile but has cooled to ambient temps (experiment)
2. 20cc - 3cc each into quart jars with grain substrate - these will then be used to innoculate 5 lb sawdust bags - (not quite sure sawdust recipe - and whether it should be sterile? - should I add some compost? could I incubate them in the bags in my greenhouse in early spring late winter? - then spread over beds at rate of one bag/m2? and cover with 1 inch compost
3. 10cc - 2cc each into 5 pint jars with a mix of water and light corn syrup to stretch out liquid spawn.... I should have loads more liquid spawn! Will have 5 pint jars with about 1.5 cups of liquid spawn in each.
4. Once soil warms up in early spring (early April) take 10cc syringes of spawn and drip them directly on the soil over an area of 1m2 and immediately cover with 1 inch of compost (experiment)
One of my issues is I do not want too much grain going out into my soil as it will bring in major rodents... so would really rather innoculate with liquid or sawdust.... Would be so simple to stretch out liquid spawn and then just add it at bed prep time along with compost. Trying to come up with an idea for innoculating beds that would be simple and cost effective for gardeners... Very expensive to innoculate beds with sawdust spawn if 5lb bag only covers about 1m2.
If I am successful I would love to add other mushroom varieties in the fall, maybe Shaggy Mane - my hubby loves Shaggy Mane mushrooms... I am also a bee keeper and it sounds like bees love sucking the juice out of the mycellium of King Stropharia as per Paul Stamets... super excited to see what changes in my garden over the season. I spoke to someone a few days ago who planted garlic in the spring in their King Stropharia garden bed... they never got any mushrooms yet however there spring planted garlic was the biggest garlic bulbs they had ever seen, and they were covered in mycellium... I thought that was interesting, any garlic I have ever planted in the spring has been a complete waste of time.
