The Mushroom Growing Thread

Not yet. I have a tub kit to grow in, I just have to buy a spore print to start some. Haven't bought the spores yet but I'm getting my supplies lined up.

Yeah it can be so hard to get all your shit together to do a proper grow. I'm so new at it that it can be tedious since I'm still learning, and I have to really plan to make sure I can dedicate the time to do it right. Have you grown in a spawn bag before?

 

I bought the unicorn bags and wood pellets just haven’t set aside the time to do the process of sterilizing and inoculating it. I bought one of those premade ones that had golden oysters. Already colonized you just cut it open and mist with water daily. It was fun and worked well. I hear lions mane is a pretty easy one once colonized.

Keeping the Petri dish agar clean when isolating is the hardest part so far. I let a few types of mushrooms I was trying to clone stall. 3/4 of the dishes get bacteria because my still airbox game is weak. The soufflé cups I got off amazon hold up in a pressure canner well but the snap on lids are a bitch to get open in a tote with hand hole cut outs. End up contaminating them just popping them open. Next time I’ll find a screw top variety. Getting a rice grain biopsy slice is another stumbling block for me.

Still easier than growing fucking tomatoes.

 

The first time I grew a batch, I innoculated the prepped mason jars it came with. I haven't tried a monotub yet. I bought plastic sterile petri dishes for this round and will mix up my agar. I will stick with working in my oven for a sterile environment . Have you tried that way before? It was the way described in the instructions of my kit tub and it was so easy and nearly foolproof, that it is unlikely I'll try a different way

 

Not sure what you mean by this oven method? A small space with little airflow to do inoculations or grain transfers? I guess you could run it to sterilize the air but thatd be ruined by the airflow when it's opened. Plus leaning over the oven door seems like it be more uncomfortable than the still air box I made.


Baking jars to sterilize?

 

I thought I'd spin off a separate thread about growing mushrooms, since they are so different than your typical gardening activities.

@Kubla Kahn , here are pictures from my instruction booklet that came with my grow tub. Online there is a lot of discussion about various methods, and the oven method has its problems, but it worked for me and I'll try it again. The instructions outline how to make a still air box (online people call them "glove boxes" a lot), and if the oven method starts to give me a lot of contamination, I'll try a still air box.

 

Yeah I’d be dubious on that for of any agar work in Petri dishes. Ive not done any liquid cultures in syringes yet. Not much surface area to get contamination on. I’ve seen people use Bunsen burners to do the same thing heat rises around it and creates a sort of vortex that keeps air flow away from it.

I’ve just biopsied mushrooms I’ve found and tried isolating them on agar. Lions mane is the only one I’ve isolated and transferred to grain spawn. Just a “tiger drop” where you cut the mycelium off of the agar and dump it straight in a sterile jar. I got that fully colonized but haven’t transferred to a grow bag. They’ve been sitting in my fridge for 8 months. I’d probably start over with pieces of the colonized grain to isolate from contamination.

So far I’ve had the most success just foraging mushrooms.

 

Yeah the agar might not work as well with the oven method, which is not truly sterile due to the air circulation. My eyes went O.O when I looked at laminar flow hoods.

It's awesome that you live somewhere you can gather wild mushrooms. I randomly had morels grow in my yard one year but otherwise I'd need to drive a ways. I'm in the wrong region of the state for that hobby. I'll have to buy my spores but hopefully that's an upfront cost only since I can make clones.

 

Are you still in the Pacific Northwest? I didnt think there could be bad areas up there for wild mushrooms. I joined a facebook group and have done a couple of foray trips around Ohio with them. Always some super knowledgeable people and growers that will share spore prints for free if you start talking to people. Even the real fun kinds, though the group leaders frown on too much of that talk.

Yeah Laminar flow hoods are retarded expensive. Then everyone bashes the not cheap chinese knock offs and people who try to build their own. Then you hear the "automated" monotubs are a scam but then people love the grow tents with inkbirds.

 

PNW technically I guess. I'm in east Oregon, in a steppe climate (grassy/scrubby/desert). I'm in probably the worst place in the state to mushroom hunt. It would be a drive to get to a location suitable for mushroom hunting, basically a day trip. But you kinda have to get out there a lot. I might be able to plan a single trip but it's not something I can do all the time.

 

I'll definitely keep my ears open. Maybe there's somewhere suitable much closer. Ill have to do some digging.

 

Foraging mushrooms is a constant pursuit for sure. You have to go out constantly to catch them at the right time right when they pop and right before the bugs get to them. Id look into ones that may actually grow around your area. Youd be surprised how diverse they can be. Time of year and conditions they can grow in. Ive been too busy duck hunting to go out but this winter has actually been really good around me according to people in the mushroom group Im in. It was negative -4 one week then raining and in the 50s a few weeks later and they were everywhere.

 

Yeah he’s got a lot of good stuff.

I do like that this hobby is relatively low cost entry wise. I already had a lot of equipment from canning that I use.

 

I've been holding off on buying a pressure canner. I'm hoping I can come across a solid one used someday but it sure would be handy for a lot of things I'm involved in

 

I lucked into a lions mane and oyster mushrooms and decided to crack out my equipment to clone them. I bought the agar plates because I just didn’t have time to mess with making it myself before the mushrooms turned.

It is peak morel season and I haven’t seen a damn thing. A foraging group I went out with last week found a bunch when me and a friend stopped back at our cars and missed it.

 

@Kubla Kahn I'm a little envious of your mushroom hunting. That is so cool. Make an update once you can see how your cloning is going.

I have all my supplies ready now for a grow, I just need the spores which I will buy today. I'm going to try a monotub with lions mane and then keep a clone going.

 

Well my last set of plates ended in disaster. Bought some fly by night ones because it was same day shipping. All had condensation and all ended up contaminated with slime. I found two more lions mane this week so bought the same plates I had last year. I got an inoculation loop to transfer spore prints. This worked well and I’m a lot more confident this is going to work better than the biopsy since I think these mushrooms were too past their prime. Hard to get a picture of but the spores scraped right on.