what are some nice mushrooms to cultivate at home? not interested in psychedelics, just like how mushrooms look
what are some nice mushrooms to cultivate at home? not interested in psychedelics, just like how mushrooms look
what are some nice mushrooms to cultivate at home? not interested in psychedelics, just like how mushrooms look
I'm interested in growing oyster mushrooms myself; can anyone vouch for this method?
https://learn.freshcap.com/growing/bucket-grow/
My plan is to make friends with local cafes for a supply of used coffee grounds, and use them in place of the pasteurized wood chips
isn't caffeine an anti-fungal? not sure if much caffeine left in coffee grounds though
>https://learn.freshcap.com/growing/bucket-grow/
This method is banking on the substrate not being colonised by a fungus that grows quicker than your oyster mushrooms and outcompetes them, seems high risk
this setup looks cool, i'm guessing it's more involved than this and you need to control for humidity and temperature somehow
Depends on the species. A lot of oyster mushrooms you just drill the holes in the wood, insert the plugs and leave them in a moist plastic bag in a spot out of the sun for a year or however long it takes. Some species are more sensitive than others, like yellow oysters prefer higher temps but tan oysters are good in tropical or temperate climates. The logs should be between 2 and 6 weeks old though (less than 2 weeks and the antifungal compounds in the wood are still active, more than 6 weeks and other fungi are more likely to have colonised the wood and will outcompete your shrooms)
>The logs should be between 2 and 6 weeks old though
so it doesn't need to be dried? it works with relatively moist wood?
Yeah, the biggest thing with culturing mushrooms is sterility and preventing other fungi from colonising the substrates. It’s why you need a laminar flow hood and lots of sterilisation equipment to make cultures on sawdust in bags or whatever. When the wood is relatively fresh the inside of the logs are still sterile, any older than 6 weeks and you run the risk of other fungi having begun to colonise the wood. That’s also why during the 2+ weeks after the logs have been cut they should be kept somewhere dry and off the ground to prevent other fungi from starting to colonise the wood. Using logs is probably the easiest way, there’s loads of vids on YouTube and its super simple
It basically boils down to:
>cut your logs, preferably ones over 4” thick
>wait 2+ weeks for the tree’s anti fungals to break down
>drill holes about the same diameter as a mushroom spawn plug
>stick a spawn plug in it
>if you’re feeling real fancy seal the hole with wax
>stick the log in a garbage bag and spray it down
>leave it in your shed or something for a year
is there any simple setup that can work in a couple of weeks rather than a year, or it's usually long term setups to have mushrooms?
You should be able to buy ready to grow kits, but I haven’t really looked into them much. I think sawdust/grain bags take a few months, but they require more of a setup and are probably more prone to contamination. It will also depend on what species you use, some a faster to colonise a substrate. Pleurotus ostreatus grows pretty quick. Logs take longer to grow but they also last for years at a time. You could start making logs now and in the mean time get a ready to grow kit
There’s two, maybe three stages depending on what yield you want.
First stage is the petri dish. You need a HEPA filter box, a mushroom, a scalpel, petri dishes or screwtop test tubes, MYA medium (mix of malt powder, nutritional yeast, and agar), and tape that can block spores. Also gloves and disinfectant. Sanitize everything and put in the box, fill the petri dishes with the MYA, cut tiny samples of the mushroom with scalpel and insert, then seal it with tape. Do this a few times because you’re likely to get moldy samples.
Second stage is the spawn. You need wide mouth jars, a pressure cooker, and either sawdust or wood pellets. After a few days to a week your petri dishes will turn into a cloudy white substance, throw away if there’s obvious mold growth or bad stench. Pressure cook the wood to kill absolutely any microbes living in there for about 10 minutes. Transfer to sterilized jars, and add the contents of a petri dish. Seal it and shake it good, wait a week for the jar to become completely white.
With the spawn you can make mushrooms. Simply transfer the jar to a bag and spray it with cold water and you’ll see caps in a day or two. It would be very difficult for it to be contaminated but keep it away from fish tanks just in case.
Third stage is bulk substrate. You need a plastic bucket and more sawdust or wood chips. Drill 1” holes all over the bucket in a lattice pattern. Pressure cook enough wood to fill a bucket, sanitize the bucket, and fill it. Keep it somewhere dark and humid for a week.
After that you can spray it with cold water and you’ll get a few, significantly big crops out of it.
Should note a glove box is a cheap alternative to HEPA boxes, it’s just a bit frustrating to work with. Plenty of youtube tutorials on building those.
There’s also a book about using hydrogen peroxide to make the laboratory grade sanitation unnecessary, since it kills most microbes except fungi, it’s called Growing Mushrooms the Easy Way by R. Rush Wayne, Ph.D
A lot of that is pretty excessive when starting out. Look to the psychedelic growers for good starting methods. You don't need a filter box, petri dish, or pressure cooker. Your starting cost should be under $100.
Life finds a way. The mushrooms WANT to grow, especially something easy like oysters. Feel good about the basics and then work your way in to more advanced set-ups.
If you want to start from a vial of spores a pressure cooker is necessary to sterilize the initial growing medium, which was rye grain when I tinkered with this.
The bitch of it was getting the right temperatures and humidity to make them fruit properly and the time to yeild was simply not worth while.
I’m gonna order some mushroom spawn plugs tonight for my beetle breeding logs, probs gonna get tan oysters
the psychedelics are coincidentally the easiest ones to grow if you just want to practice but oysters are pretty easy too
How are psychedelics easy to grow?
I haven't tried Ben Tek, but if I want to grow p.subs in the spring/summer I have to put multiple bags of ice on my grow every morning
Yellow oysters and pink oysters are cool looking and easy to grow. Yellow oysters in particular usually aren’t sold because they’re too delicate to survive shipping and refrigeration
looks qt
Came here to post this.
Oysters more broadly are easy to grow and look fantastic.