• Everything other than hot peppers. Questions, discussion, and grow logs. Cannabis grow pics are only allowed when posted from a legal juridstiction.

Anyone growing mushrooms?

Timmmy newbie

Timmmy newbie

As the title states I'm looking for tips on growing mushrooms, cost cutting tips and a general how to from someone with experience.

My plan so far is to go to a mushroom farm thats maybe 30mins drive to buy some spent mushroom compost as a starter and then try to make some new batches from it. I'm thinking of starting at a very simple level before even thinking of the home made sterile cultures and all of that hard stuff.

I might also go down to the local bunnings and buy one of their kits.

:beer:

P.s Pic's welcome :)
 
i dont think spent mushroom compost inst going to do you any good.
im assuming you want to grow the common grocery store agaricus type mushrooms.
you are going to need some poo and straw... and a way to pasteurize it. then you are going to need to inoculate that with sterile spore solutions or a culture.

i looked into growing oyster mushrooms for a while... never got around to it. id like to think im somewhat knowledgeable about mushroom cultivation.
 
I've read up a bit on it and yeah there seems to be an exact science if your starting a colony from scratch but I read a post from a guy and he was stating that it could be done easily and on the cheap. He lived next door to a major mushroom farm and was buying their spent compost that was no longer considered productive enough for a commercial operation. He was buying bags of UNTREATED Live compost and was getting a few small runs out of the cheap compost. From what I remember he was paying something like $3 a bag and getting maybe half the number of mushrooms that you'd expect from a $18 kit you can buy from nurseries.

I'll try out his cheapo method as it won't be a too bigger undertaking if it all goes belly up :) :)
 
Timmmy newbie said:
I've read up a bit on it and yeah there seems to be an exact science if your starting a colony from scratch but I read a post from a guy and he was stating that it could be done easily and on the cheap. He lived next door to a major mushroom farm and was buying their spent compost that was no longer considered productive enough for a commercial operation. He was buying bags of UNTREATED Live compost and was getting a few small runs out of the cheap compost. From what I remember he was paying something like $3 a bag and getting maybe half the number of mushrooms that you'd expect from a $18 kit you can buy from nurseries.

I'll try out his cheapo method as it won't be a too bigger undertaking if it all goes belly up :) :)
Click to expand...


i see what you mean now. you could also try and mix in some fresh newly pasteurized(but cooled)manure/straw substrate to get better flushes. and correct me if im wrong but dont the grocery store type mushrooms require some sort of casing?

you should read...
The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home
http://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-Cultivator-Practical-Growing-Mushrooms/dp/0961079800

this book is great covers about everything you can think of my only gripe is that like half the book is dedicated to makeing mushroom compost, which i was not interested in doing.

Paul Staments also has a speach on ted talks, it was pretty interesting.


i think this book had sections on old school mushroom cultivation in france.
they would basically take a chunk of colonized substrate from a previous run, and toss it into fresh mushroom compost. it takes a long time, but it works.

a better faster alternative that i would your way up to is culturing mycellium in a liquid medium. then inject the mycellium in somewhat large volumes into your pasteurized substrate. you should colonize way faster that way.

ive seen people take an isolated strain of oystester mushroom and grow it out on large disposable petri dishes, then scrape them into a sterile blender, and blend the mycellium into like 2 liters of sterile water. they would then innoculate like 100 bags of substrate with that 2 liters.
 
i think this book had sections on old school mushroom cultivation in france.
they would basically take a chunk of colonized substrate from a previous run, and toss it into fresh mushroom compost. it takes a long time, but it works.
Click to expand...

I like that idea, if I can get some bags of old compost from a farm I'll leave some along to just produce what they can and then I might use one as a starter. I'm not worried about how long it will take but I'm keen on some serious volume :)

ive seen people take an isolated strain of oystester mushroom and grow it out on large disposable petri dishes, then scrape them into a sterile blender, and blend the mycellium into like 2 liters of sterile water. they would then innoculate like 100 bags of substrate with that 2 liters.
Click to expand...

I might read up on this method also as it sounds great. But I wonder how you could isolate the bits you need to put into a petri dish? Thats if you don't even have any mushrooms :) That farm I was talking about has all sorts of fresh varieties available and maybe starters but I'm not sure.

Will update when I get around to visiting the farm :)
 
It all depends what type of mushrooms you want to grow. I'd probably start out with oyster mushrooms which are usually aggresive enough that sterile practices are not really necessary.
I have lots of old mushroom pics posted here but I can't seem to locate them with the messed up search function.

Definitely get both of Paul Stamets books, they are the bibles of mushroom growing
 
Long time. Been busy but I bit the bullet today and bought a starter kit.

I've split the kit into two separate lots.

The starter medium was totally live :) :) not sure how to put it but it's all white and looks very much alive.

I also dumped a bag of mulch into the used starter kit bag for a bit of a test.

This will be a real learning curve lol

But hopefully I'll get at least 1 mushroom.
 
POTAWIE said:
It all depends what type of mushrooms you want to grow. I'd probably start out with oyster mushrooms which are usually aggresive enough that sterile practices are not really necessary.
I have lots of old mushroom pics posted here but I can't seem to locate them with the messed up search function.

Definitely get both of Paul Stamets books, they are the bibles of mushroom growing
Click to expand...
here is one -
Potawie Enokitake mushrooms
 
A work colleague bought a oyster mushroom starter for me on the weekend so i'm going to try them out.

Since the last post I've bought another starter kit and did a little test. I'll have to find the link but I found some dudes post about growing mushrooms in newspaper. Looked easy enough and theres always too many newspapers around the house so I turned one starter kit into 3 :) If i had more newspaper I think I could have made 6 or more.

I'm going to try the same newspaper trick with the oyster starter if my newspaper originals are growing, haven't been home for a few days so we will see tonight :beer:
 
Can't say I'm having any luck with the plain old button mushrooms but the oyster mushrooms are starting to grow.

oysterstart001.jpg


I made a base of shredded paper that was soaked in bleach. Ive put them in an old seed starter so that its nice and humid, so far they seem rather happy.

oysterstart004.jpg
 
Just borrow the crappy local rag from your neighbours they sure as hell dont ask for it and most just chuck it out! Five bucks is a steal, pitty i dont live half an hour away!
 
I'm crossing my fingers hoping that they sell other varieties.

I'd like to give shiitakes a go.

I'm thinking I'll give up on the buttons and go for any varieties that can grow on newspaper, its just so cheap lol But I wonder if they'll taste wrong lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top