mushrooms?

[big worm]

anyone here ever try growing their own mushrooms? my wife has been wanting me to try for some time now. i have the dark place but i just don't think it would be worth the effort. they cost $1.89usa per 4oz here..i say just buy em

[Butch50]

Not yet, but it's on my list.

You can purchase pre-innoculated wood that will grow shitake and others, not too pricy either. Just toss them out in the woods and wait. Supposed to be nothing to it.

[Godstilla]

goddamn i love mushrooms. Now i'm hungry! Sorry I'm no help!

[punkin]

Done it with the mushroom kit in a box thing they sell in the supermarkets here. Kits about the same price as the shrooms it produces though.

Be different if they had a kit for Oyster Mushrooms...love those beauties, taste like steak done up with some chopped bacon and onions and fried in butter












WouldaLovedAGoldtopKitTooBackInMyDayPunkin

[Rudi]

I get mushroom compost for my vege garden $1.50 a bag , put a couplea bags under the house and sprayed them with water daily in two weeks I filled a broccoli box with mushrooms. Nothing like fried shrooms on toast for brekie.

[glassman]

grew mushrooms for years when i was young...."medicinal kind" now i have grown up i'v done shitaki with much success. got all my supplies from Fungi Perfecti in washington state. Paul Stamets is the king of shrooms. read his book on medicinal mushrooms. you'll learn the hows and whys of all kinds for fun and profit. last time i picked shitki's on logs we got a 5 gallon pail full. as a hobby growing mush is right up there with stillin. gman

[new_moonshiner]

anyone grow the Morels ? sometimes called dry land fish.. now thats my kind of mushroom.

[glassman]

i set up a morel bed but moved before i could harvest. only mushroom you can't grow is the chanterell. gman

[myles]

Would just love to grow morrels. Set up some logs with dowels for various forest mushrooms last year, shitake, lions mane, oysters etc but not harvested any yet.
Myles

[Hillbilly Rebel]

Morels grow wild around here in the spring. I'm not real good at finding them but I rank right up there with eating them. Buttered and sauted; mixed in with scrambled eggs or with a soup made on them, they are really good!

[new_moonshiner]

I hear ya Rebel , I dont have any trouble finding them if they are near a frying pan..

[big worm]

I get mushroom compost for my vege garden $1.50 a bag , put a couplea bags under the house and sprayed them with water daily in two weeks I filled a broccoli box with mushrooms. Nothing like fried shrooms on toast for brekie.

ya we got that here...your idea is a gooden im gonna try it thanks *************will they grow in cold weather or are they a warm spot crop?

[Rudi]

Dunno if they (shrooms)will grow in the cold the temp here ranges between 15 deg c and 32deg c at the moment and the mushies keep comming

[dixiedrifter]

Actually I managed to come across a few scant references of using spent distiller's grain to grow the shrooms... seems like an ideal substrate although might need some vermiculite... I would think it would come out of the still pre-pasturized and everything.

[I-GOR]

Done it with the mushroom kit in a box thing they sell in the supermarkets here. Kits about the same price as the shrooms it produces though.

Be different if they had a kit for Oyster Mushrooms...love those beauties, taste like steak done up with some chopped bacon and onions and fried in butter

I haven't checked the forum for a couple of days, so I missed this one. I know this is a little late, hope punkin notices it.
You can get oyster mushroom kits from Fungi Perfecti, not sure if there are any importing / exporting laws that apply.

http://www.fungi.com/kits/indoor.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Oyster mushrooms grow commonly around here, so I always grab them when I see them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_mushroom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I great one to try also is sulpher shelf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow When they grow on conifers, they can taste a little bitter. Just check for worms and make sure they are young, firm and have good flesh. They taste fantastic fried in butter, salt pepper, or you can fry some chopped shallots in the butter first, add the mushrooms and finish by adding a little sherry and fresh cream. They really do taste a little cheesy to me.
Dang, I was supposed to paint the bathroom this weekend but now I'm gonna have to go shroomin'.

I haven't done the kit yet cause I'm too cheap.

I have to keep adding to this post......
I'm always on the lookout for sparisis crispa, the cauliflower mushroom, because it's so dang good!
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/sparassis_crispa.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
I don't think there are any poisonous look-a-likes. I've found it only a couple of times. Gently wash, when you cut the fronds apart they resemble cooked lasagna noodles, then bread it in beer batter and deep fry like fish or tempura. One of the best I've ever had. Has a distinctive, perfumey flowery smell. On some occasions I've smelled it in the woods but couldn't locate it. I found one the size of a basket ball, it was just great!

[al_shine]

Morels are a mycorrhizal mushroom that grows in conjunction with a tree. There has been limited success in growing them.

Oysters are a very easy beginner mushroom to grow.

in fact, if you go to http://www.mweme.org there is a little slide show *cough* someone made to get my brother growing them on his spent brewing grains.

We're making a few changes, using grow bags instead of jars, but he was successful on his first try, so y'all might like it.

The change is you buy the seal a meal style grow bags, and just plop all your grains in there (or you know, up to about 3 quarts), seal it up. poke your need through the bag, (without touching grain) squirt squirt, seal the bag with electrical tape. flame sterilize your needle, repeat.

He's up in Portland, Or so this time of year humidity is not an issue, otherwise you might need to make a fruiting chamber.

Might as well grow mushrooms off your grains if y'all are mashing your own. Oysters are good eating.

You could also use the grains to inoculate straw or shredded paper if you wanted to up your volume, but that's a little advanced and you have to pasteurize your straw...

but if you have a propane burner and a thermometer, that is not too hard.

[punkin]

You obviously are fairly involved in it, Al, just to save me googling, do you have contacts in aus for the spores?

Where can i find more info and pictures ect about the process and the fruiting chamber requirements?








IThinkIMightGiveThisOneAGoPunkin

[al_shine]

Sorry for the slow reply, you caught me on my laboratory day. Fungi are amazing, yeasts and mushrooms included. I'm in the USA so I don't know any Aus providers of spawn, however, I usually use www.sporeworks.com and they are fast and good quality. Local spawn will probably be fresher, however, and I'm not sure how long it would take to get orders from them.

For the home grower that lacks a flow hood (for making a sterile wind) I think that liquid culture inoculation is the best, however, there isn't a concise soup to nuts resource on this type of growing.

Some overall good resources are Roger Rabbit's excellent "Let's grow mushrooms" video series at http://www.mushroomvideos.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow , the book "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" by Paul Stamets (www.fungi.com) and the forum at www.shroomery.org which is more dedicated to hallucinogens, but also has a very good gourmet section, as well has some amazing mycologists.

I have been planning to produce a guide to liquid culturing as part of a how to use mushrooms to save the environment lecture I promised to give for one of my old biology teachers, so if you are interested I'll move that to the front burner.

Things you'll need for easy cultivation are:
Pressure cooker.
Silicone aquarium sealant.
mushroom grow bags (http://sporeworks.com/store/product.php ... t=0&page=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow)
impulse sealer (for the seal a meal style bags)
culture or spore syringe
high test ethanol
alcohol burner (lab style)
Electrical tape
dust mask
latex gloves.

and grains to grow on (spent are fine for oyster) along with some clean sawdust, perhaps.

Thing's you'll need to make your own inoculant are:
(better than buying a new culture every time if you decide to keep at it)

half pint wide mouth canning jars.
Lab style Stir plate + stir bars (semi-optional)
Largest re-autoclavable syringe you can get along with some big long needles (mycelium will tend to clog needles)
Agar Agar (and some recipes, or buy from lab supply)

---

It's a few hundred bucks worth of stuff, depending on what you already own, but a rewarding hobby, I find. An up shot is you should be able to culture out your own yeasts, too, although I'm currently haven't tried that.

[big worm]

wow i already own about 8 of the items you need. the ol ball and chain like portabellos

[punkin]

Thanks al, i did a bit of googling this morning and found a fair bit of info. The psylocibins seem to dominate a lot of it, but that's held no interest for me for at least twenty years

One good resource i found was a series of vids from an hour documentry (again foccused on the magics, but i assume the process is the same) on youtube.

I'm just about to watch the second episode now...

I like the way they grow the fruit in aquariums, i got a few good fish tanks in the shed.

I have a food saver machine, and i reckon i can find a pressure cooker at an op shop...

I'll do some more research and visit some of the links you've posted...thanks Al, i'll be back with questions no doubt.









SoThey'reGunnaSaveThePlanetEhPunkin

[al_shine]

Yeah, what can I say? A lot of the interest is around tripping. I don't think most mycologists are really bothered by that, because after about two months of study, funny colors and the giggles aren't the weirdest thing you know about mushrooms.

As far as saving the world, besides being delicious, the extra cellular enzymes oyster mushrooms excrete to digest lignin in wood is also capable of digesting crude/motor oil. So a possible in situ fix of oil/fuel spills (that has actually been done) is to grow oyster mushrooms on the spilled oil. The oil gets turned into clean dirt, clean mushrooms (assuming no heavy metal contamination, which is not a good assumption) and carbon dioxide. Plenty clean enough for green plants to grow on what used to be a dead zone.

There are a few other crazy uses too, but that's the one I specialize in.

I have used fish tanks before, and they work pretty well. Now I use the "shotgun" chamber, which is basically a plastic tote with a billion quarter inch holes drilled on all six sides. put about 5 inches of hydrated perlite on the bottom for moisture regulation and it'll still get plenty of gas exchange. Gas exchange is the one problem with fishy tanks if you don't actively aerate them, you have to come by and wave them out a few times a day.

Portobellas are a brown cap version of your common button mushroom that are allowed to grow to maturity, and they actually are grown off compost much more than you would grow them off of pure grain, but again a relatively easy home mushroom grow.

[punkin]

So could you do the fish tank aeration by adding an aquarium pump with check valve on a timer for an hour here and there, then having a funnel (softdrink bottle neck) hanging low with a tube to the outside to stop the robbing of humidity as a breather/outlet?

I been surfing youtube all arvo and haven't seen that yet...


Was thinking so far of using store bought oysters as a tissue sample to grow in homemade agar on petris (so you get the single mywhatsit) and then using the vermiculite/flour as a jar method to start. Moving up to grain beds with casings in the future when i got the hang of it?

I could make a glove box easy enough, and the laminar flow thing doesn't seem hard either, just having rooom to store all this gear









StillSurfingYouTubePunkin

[Dnderhead]

same hear punkin got a 25x50ft ( 7.62 x15.24 m) barn full now no use to start something more.

[punkin]

same hear punkin got a 25x50ft ( 7.62 x15.24 m) barn full now no use to start something more.

Bourbon Girl gave me a real funny look when i told her bout this, reckons i got too much going. Lucky i didn't mention my idea to build a Harley from the ground up

[al_shine]

If you're willing to jump right in to tissue culture work then you can probably take a tissue clone from store bought mushrooms. If you're successful you'll have isolated a known fruiting strain, which is good.

I'm not sure if it'll be cheaper than buying an isolated strain in solution, but it'll be more fun. That is kind of an advanced thing, but definantly do-able in a glove box. Just practice good clean room technique and try to do a bunch of clones.

Rip the mushroom in half instead of cutting it, flame sterilize your scalpel or loupe, take the top off the petri dish, cool your scalpel in the agar, scrape a bit of inner flesh from the mushroom, plop it on the agar, close the dish, sterilize, repeat.

RogerRabbits video on this is very good.

Always transfer mycelium away from contaminants and after a couple transfers you'll probably get it. Just don't go waving your hands over the open petri dish and use slow careful movements.

I'm not sure I know what you're imagining for the bubbler, so if you try it out, or can draw something up I'd love to see it. Fruiting chambers are an area I'm relatively weak on. Unfortunately my environment isn't very clean either. When I have money I'll start a farm and turn some intermodal shipping containers into a laboratory and a few growing rooms. That's the dream anyway.

Because my environment is pretty dirty and I don't have a lab room of my own, I have worked out a way to go from spores/culture to fruiting without the use of a glove box or flow hood, but for isolating from mushrooms you'll need to go the glovebox route.

As far as girls go, I don't live with my girlfriend, and she doesn't tell me what to do, so I can't give you any advice about that!

[punkin]

Thanks Al, that's all as i was thinking it'd work.

I've got another project now waiting to go as soon as i get the energy, which is good.

Probably be after xmas now, i'll start collecting the bits and pieces.

[vajravarahi]

A friend of mine is an herbalist. She innoculated a bunch of oak logs with shitake, oyster, and maybe another medicinal kind. Fungi Perfecti was what she recommended.

[al_shine]

Probaly Reishi (ling chi) mushrooms. Paul Stamets is the man. fungi.com is a good source for spawn.

[rad14701]

I did the Mushroom Farm kit many years ago... I could never grow as many as I eat... I just can't get enough... Been one of those hobbies I'd like to get more involved in... I keep an eye out whenever I'm hiking but we don't have a lot of edibles here in my area, unfortunately...

[big worm]

we was allways told never eat "wild" mushrooms they will kill ya. so its canned or fresh from the store i wish i knew the good ones from the bad ones