Growing mushrooms
- Thread starter thebat
- Start date
Those are nice looking mushrooms. How's the taste on the king though?
Ah, the sight of colonized mycelium! One of my personal favorites. Looks like you're quite successful. Good job! Ive done it myself with almost the same set-up but was using organic brown rice powder in with the vermiculite. Seemed to increase mycelium production within the jar.
Lotsa of fun! Thanks for posting!
Lotsa of fun! Thanks for posting!
I do have brf in the cakes, may not be organic but it is still in there. The temps aren't the best in my room for colonization though...
My pleasure!
Posession of spores is legal in Minnesota but colonizing and growing of mushrooms from those spores is highly illegal so I won't be doing that and if I was I would not post it online
But this one gets results faster!
mine are a bit different since i'm growing on logs. they're getting their bi-weekly soaking, and i wasn't paying attention to them so my first shiitake got a bit shredded by slugs.
That sucks! Any number of things can affect the logs though, have to worry about how healthy the tree was, if it was cut the right time of year to maximize stored nutrients in the wood, and how well the bark is stuck to the log. Doing it on brown rice worries me, brown rice is PACKED full of arsenic. The plant uptakes silica for healthy growth and it's grown in crappy soil and uptakes arsenic instead since they're chemically close.
shiitakes are really best bang for the buck... they have all kinds of anti-cancer, anti-tumor, anti-hiv properties. they cause your body to absorb cholesterol instead of getting sticky and creating blockages. if you have allergies they can lessen your allergies too. also a good source of iron and other nutrients. they really are kind of a miracle food that's understated. i eat them every day and take a supplement blend of a couple types of mushrooms and i haven't gotten "sick" in 2 years since i've started it. when i get sick now, i get a strange tingling in my throat that goes away in a day. good luck to you!
PS. they're also damn tasty and go with almost any meal. fantastic with peppers.
PS. they're also damn tasty and go with almost any meal. fantastic with peppers.
I bought wood dowels that were inoculated with them from online, and had a maple tree that needed cutting down in my yard. the wood should be harvested in the fall as soon as the tree loses it's leaves so it's packed full of nutrients and energy it'll need for the spring; takes a lot of energy to make leaves and buds and seeds. you will get many more mushrooms doing that. then scrub the wood to get all the dirt/lichens off of it(don't want any potential breeding places for bugs or anything sucking nutrients from them). then in a honeycomb pattern drill holes in the log and hammer(rubber) the dowels in, afterward paint on some melted cheese wax to seal any freshly cut face of the wood and the exposed end of every dowel; this makes sure nothing else but your mushrooms colonizes the log so it's very important. also, do not damage the bark! it is the most important part of the log, and will no longer fruit mushrooms if it comes off. water the logs about once a week for an hour or so, the goal is to keep the wood between 30-50% humidity. keep them in full shade and out of the wind, they will produce mushrooms anywhere between 3-7 years depending on the size of the log and how well they're taken care of. when one of your logs starts to breakdown and is no longer producing mushrooms, drill holes in some new logs, shred the old ones, and pack the holes in the new log with the shredded old log, you'll never have to pay for mushroom plugs again! just make sure everything you use is sterile. some people prefer to bury their logs halfway in the dirt, it helps to keep the humidity up and less chance of them drying out.
Strange tip! shiitake logs like to be flipped over and beaten with a rubber hammer, it plucks their mycellium like a harp chord and sticks it to new wood fiber, giving them a boost of nutrients and promotes colonization.
Strange tip! shiitake logs like to be flipped over and beaten with a rubber hammer, it plucks their mycellium like a harp chord and sticks it to new wood fiber, giving them a boost of nutrients and promotes colonization.
You can buy spores online. I'd suggest first buying a kit from somewhere unlike what I did. I went and tried this myself since I like to do things on my own and without kits as much as possible. Just makes it all that more rewarding in the end for me
If that's still out there I'm pretty sure I could win the money
I want to start a mushroom farm
I want to start a mushroom farm