Mushroom Monday - The Surprise
Here's a #mushroommonday surprise I got this morning before heading out to work.
My lion's mane decided to grow a rather large clump without me even misting it. There must have been enough moisture in the block for it to decide to grow another clump. Who know maybe I was over watering it before.
Now for more last year finds. This guy was my first amanita muscaria find of the red variety. I had to go all the way up to Michigan to find it.
More eyelash cup fungi. I never get tired of finding this stuff.
Here's an orangy yellow russula. Who knows if these are edible or not.
This is what the gills of the russula look like. I've read that some russula are edible while others mostly cause stomache aches. Parboiling is supposed to remove the toxin but it could be risky...
I am still trying to learn more about mushrooms, do most people buy grow bags, and start the process over every couple of weeks?
Yeah getting a grow bag is the easiest way to start. Depending on the mushroom you can get a crop every week. My golden oysters have been blooming every week for the past three months.
Thank you for replying to my questions, I have been thinking about how people can become more sustainable and before the grow bags get entirely depleated, do you think that a person could harvest mushrooms and toss the mushrooms and some sugar in a blender, and spread the mushroom spores on a new batch of sawdust/wood chips...how do you think a person could continue to grow mushrooms even if they could not buy more spores from other growers?
Thanks
One way to get the oysters to grow after the bag is depleted is to let them drop spores onto pieces of corrugated cardboard. Once the cardboard is nice and dusted by spores you layer them in between straw or some sawdust. Like a cardboard straw sandwich. Then you put a humidity tent over the layers and keep everything humid and around 70 - 80 degrees. Eventually you will see white myceleum growing on the cardboard and they will begin blooming into mushrooms. The hardest part is keeping green mold or other fungi from taking over, fairly difficult.
Does a person need to soak the cardboard before the spores fall on it?
Also can you explain to me how mushrooms survived for years and years out in nature, because some people act like everything needs to be sanitary so we can grow fungi. Wont what people are doing just produce fungi with weak imune systems?
No need to soak cardboard as you will be misting the block of mushrooms that are growing already. Too much moisture can be bad. Fungi only grows in their preferred environment. Otherwise the spores just sit there inert. So the key is to give them their right environment to grow into myceleum. Here's a way to grow mushrooms by soaking the cardboard if you alreasy have a block infused with mycelium
Thanks for the information, here is a video that I found about growing mushrooms:
Please help me understand. What is the substance that the guy is intermingling with the wood chips, and how can I make the stuff? It looks like frosted mini wheat cereal
But I am pretty sure it is mushrooms, so how is it made in nature?
That is mushroom spawn, it's basically an auger that has been sprinkled with spores then blended up and mixed with a substrate. Nutrient auger is a bit tough to keep clean of other fungi. You basically have to work in a really sterile environment to keep other fungi and bacteria out of your auger. Here's a long article roughly explaining how it's done https://sciencing.com/make-nutrient-agar-home-6317533.html
Oyster mushrooms are a pretty aggressive mushroom so you can probably get them to grow without auger.
You can also buy already infused auger and inject it into a substrate to try and get mushrooms to grow. https://www.amazon.com/Root-mushroom-Mushroom-Cultures-erinaceus/dp/B07J2X8SWK/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=mushroom+spawn&qid=1584364378&sr=8-6
Thank you for expaining things to me, I am still trying to figure out ow things work.
I guess since mushroom spawn is generally delicate, that is why mushroom spawn is shipped to customers in a sealed plastic bag. Then my question becomes why are customers instructed to cut the bags open (thus getting rid of the sterile environment?)
Once again thank you for taking the time to teach me about this process.
Once you cut open the bag you mist the openings and the new moisture starts the mycelium producing fruiting bodies aka shrooms. The right temperature and humidity is needed though to get them growing.
Wont the hole introduce too much competition (bacteria and other spores of fungus)that will destroy the mushrooms that you are wanting to grow?
:)
It can, but usually the mushrooms that are grown commercially are aggressive. I've had a few blocks eventually get overtaken if I introduced too much water. Usually the standard green fridge mold is the culprit.
Also how does a person create their own plugs?
Is it easy to identify what you are not suppose to eat?
Probably easier just to buy plugs, they are pretty cheap. As for foraging just learn the major edible mushrooms like morels, oysters, lions mane, dryads saddle and chicken of the woods. All the rest require lots of research.
Am I understanding things correctly, are mushroom plugs like the 'germs' and by drilling into a log and hammering the plugs in...basicly we are shoving the 'germy' plugs into the healthy logs. Is that right?
Just drill a hole in a dead log then put the plug in. Wait until the weather is rainy and the right temperature and see if any shrooms have sprouted.
Do you suppose that if a bunch of dead logs were place near a log that had been inoculated, do you think that all of the logs would produce mushrooms?
Yup if you let the mushrooms spore out over them ie put the plugged ones in a crosshatch pattern over clean logs beneath them. Might take a couple seasons though. Faster just to plug them all.