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

Growing Mushrooms

mx5inpa said:
 
 I'm having a hard time reconciling "mindblowing" and "loopy".
 
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fungi+paul+stamets
 
This is the guy I mentioned.
 
Loopy - some of his psychedelic mushroom rants can seem a bit loopy, yes. My opinion, of course.
 
Mind-blowing - I'll list a few bits; turkey tails cancer curing properties, others that can clean oil damage from spills, then there's the fungi that is being tested for it's nuclear waste disposal properties. All pretty mind-blowing, if you ask me.
 
.........
 
AaronB said:
 
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fungi+paul+stamets
 
This is the guy I mentioned.
 
Loopy - some of his psychedelic mushroom rants can seem a bit loopy, yes. My opinion, of course.
 
Mind-blowing - I'll list a few bits; turkey tails cancer curing properties, others that can clean oil damage from spills, then there's the fungi that is being tested for it's nuclear waste disposal properties. All pretty mind-blowing, if you ask me.
 
.........
 
lol I knew who you were talking about
 
I havent heard any of his rants on psychedelics.
 
AaronB said:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fungi+paul+stamets
 
This is the guy I mentioned.
 
Loopy - some of his psychedelic mushroom rants can seem a bit loopy, yes. My opinion, of course.
 
Mind-blowing - I'll list a few bits; turkey tails cancer curing properties, others that can clean oil damage from spills, then there's the fungi that is being tested for it's nuclear waste disposal properties. All pretty mind-blowing, if you ask me.
 
.........
Absolutely man.. Mycelium is incredible with all its properties and endless possibilities for its use.. :)
 
This thread is awesome! Got me a hankering to grow some oysters. I think I shall do just that in about a month or so once it cools down a bit.
 
I have grown various oyster strains, shiitake, and of course those wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for learning how with grow p. cubensis
 
0Bw4ojz.jpg
 
I wish I had seen this thread earlier. I actually used to work for a commercial mushroom spawn company that specialized in ready to fruit mushroom blocks. If any one has any questions about culinary mushroom cultivation or general growing best practices feel free to reach out.
 
I recently observed that the hot pour agar technique works extremely well with layers of alternating pH. A questionable culture first has hot agar poured on it at 140℉ and then after it cools another layer is poured that has a high pH.

Most contaminants will grow poorly up through the layers while the myc of basidiomycota grows right up through and can be transverse cleanly.

I also learned that the idea that antibiotics like amoxicillin are destroyed by pressure cooking or autoclave cycles is entirely false.

Numerous forms of antibiotics survive heating cycles... in fact most do. Only a percentage of the antibiotic is broken down by heat and it is rarely much. The longer the heat cycle is the more the degradation increases but for most agar recipes and applications even amoxicillin is stable enough to be fine to add to agar.
 
As a last ditch effort, a hot agar pour can be used but at 140F you have a high likelihood of damaging your culture. I would personally rather isolate from the cleanest section of the plate onto fresh agar with a properly selective medium. If your high pH agar is going to be the deciding factor, it will work just as well on a fresh plate without thermal shock. Fresh tissue isolation would be preferred over all of these.

A proper culture program that limits serial transfers and works only off of mother cultures would ensure that in the event of contamination, the entire vessel can be sacrificed without impact on production.

With regard to antibiotics, use the recommended protocols. Some are heat labile others are not. If you are already at the point of using antibiotics, using a glass hockey stick to spread it over the surface of the plate won’t add that much time.

My $0.02.
 
Interesting opinions.

Rude and uninformed though, but then that isn't uncommon online is it?

For those working with dirty spore prints from questionable specimens the hot pour technique and antibiotics work wonders but only if you use meticulous clean technique already.

If you can't do clean transfers then neither the hot pour nor the use of antibiotics will do you any good. Anyone who thinks it doesn't work or that it damages mycelia hasn't tried it and doesn't know much about it. I don't think intelligent people waste time slandering techniques they have zero experience with.

And most antibiotics are far more heat stable than you appear to know. If you want to learn more about them:

Thermal stability assessment of antibiotics in moderate temperature and subcritical
water using a pressurized dynamic flow-through system
Ola Svahn and Erland Björklund
School of Education and Environment,
Division of Natural Sciences, Kristianstad University, SE-291 88 Kristianstad, Sweden
 
While I do agree with your statement on sterile technique being paramount, I can’t say I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your statements.

That having been said, while good sterile technique Is important, it is not always possible or practical. In these cases, antibiotics have their use. Furthermore antibiotics are tools (expensive ones at that) just like anything else and should be used according to their manufactures instructions. Can antibiotics be used outside of their suggested range? Of course. However their efficacy may not be as intended. A wrench can certainly be used as a hammer but there is often a better way.

As someone who worked with the USDA isolating mycorrhizae from soil and plant tissue and later went on to manage a commercial mushroom spawning facility I am speaking only from a decade or more of hands on experience in the field. I would suggest that those interested in hobbyist mushroom growing do their own research and consume a wide variety of sources. My advice would be start with the tried and true techniques and ultimately do what works best for you.

I will now disengage. For those interested in more information, my previous offer still stands.
 
Edaxflamma said:
As someone who worked with the USDA isolating mycorrhizae from soil and plant tissue and later went on to manage a commercial mushroom spawning facility I am speaking only from a decade or more of hands on experience in the field. I would suggest that those interested in hobbyist mushroom growing do their own research and consume a wide variety of sources. My advice would be start with the tried and true techniques and ultimately do what works best for you.
I am inclined to agree.
 
I've not worked commercially in mycology but have over 20 years experience with it and I did begin with tried and true methods before I began learning a lot more and doing countless experiments.
 
The basis of good mycology is clean technique in my opinion and although many tools (as you put it) do have their uses they ultimately are not shortcuts that can bypass the basics. 
 
Many perceptions that exist in the hobby however are dead wrong, but information about such things is far better suited to a paper notebook than an online discussion. 
 
Max Nihil said:
I am inclined to agree.
 
I've not worked commercially in mycology but have over 20 years experience with it and I did begin with tried and true methods before I began learning a lot more and doing countless experiments.
 
The basis of good mycology is clean technique in my opinion and although many tools (as you put it) do have their uses they ultimately are not shortcuts that can bypass the basics. 
 
Many perceptions that exist in the hobby however are dead wrong, but information about such things is far better suited to a paper notebook than an online discussion. 
 
Agreed!  :cheers:
 
There is definitely a divide between the industrial and hobbyist growers in many areas. Some things just aren't feasible on the hobbyist scale and similarly, some of the hobbyist teks just don't scale up nor would they be appropriate for commercial varieties. While the hobbyist growers have many more degrees of freedom when it comes to the kinds of test they can run, the data, repetition, and statistical analysis often aren't there. That having been said, I would be lying if I said I hadn't crowed sourced some really great research from the hobbyist mycology forums. On the other hand, the industry tends to have a very narrow range of research with robust methods and statistical support but doesn't share the information it gleans. Both have their own unique issues.
 
I also agree that misinformation is rampant, in part due to some of the reasons I listed above. However, I believe there is a more reasonable, less malevolent, and less manufactured reason for all of the discrepancy.
 
In both the hobbyist and commercial settings I have seen some techniques work very well for some people, but not for others. Between culturing fairly selective living organisms that can come in a wide range of genetic strains, working with variable raw organic materials as substrates, dealing with a whole host of different environmental conditions, and the skill of the individual operator, it is easy to see how different people can have wildly different experiences "doing the exact same thing." Variability and unknowns are still a large part of the very nature of mycology.
 
That is why again I wholeheartedly echo your call to a strong foundation in sterile technique, the basics, and dedication to the craft. The more variation that can be beaten out of the process, the better.
 
There is a saying in the industry that "mushroom cultures will take on the personality of their mycologist". I think that is very true. Everyone is looking for different characteristics and is applying different variants of techniques to a wide variety of living things on batches of constantly changing organic ingredients. 
 
I may have misunderstood your closing remark but I feel as though that is the only part where I may still disagree. Regardless of the outwardly perceived quality of an individual's experience, I feel that it should still be shared. Why? Because it will either enforce verified trends, will be unusual enough to provoke meaningful discussion, or should it produce neither of those, then at the very least it would be a resource to those who might be able to address it in the future.
 
As an aside, in addition to the specific methods, we should also include the reasons why we guide people in the ways we do because often context matters.
 
In the end, I think we are all here so that we can help others avoid making the same mistakes we did and similarly learn from the experiences of others in turn. Ultimately, everyone including newcomers will need to sift through the information on their own and decide what information is valuable to them.
 
Phew, lots to unpack there. But long story short - I agree! Never meant to come off as confrontational - just wanted to provide a different perspective and experience.  
 
We owe it to ourselves and the others working in our field to examine and challenge each other and the status quo - regardless of whether it is mushrooms, peppers, or anything else. If we don't share our experiences, ask questions, or challenging others, we'll never learn. 
 
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