Mushrooms anyone?

[Hermitian]

With the amount of horticulture (and tissue culture) down here I can find a business with laminar flow and sterile environments every 2 miles. The missing part of the equation seems to be that consumers have not tasted better mushrooms.

[RootLoops]

that's definitely a factor, the people have to first know they want it. oysters can go for ten to twenty dollars a pound depending on what people are willing to pay for them. if you can find chefs that appreciate good mushrooms you can do really well because they can't possibly get a fresher mushroom from sysco

[epsilon]

Theres A woman who makea a killing on oysters here in riverside co. and she grows off of sawdust spawn. At least that's what it looked like.

Some time ago I looked into culturing truffles, and interestingly enough you can buy pre-inoculated Oak and Filbert trees and just let them grow and harvest after a few years.

I also figure if you could dig yourself up one go buy one at a major farmers market like the one in LA, you could inoculate full grown trees in your yard by making a batch of spore mass.

Also I assume with the mycorrhizzal family's you could potentially wipe an area and then repopulate with chantrelles eventually the chantrellus group would be acclimated with preference to the predominating generas. But seeing as that mycorrhizzals are directly tied into living organism I doubt anyone one will be developing home cultures unless they start using bonsais lol.

Alternately I would look into the life cycling of morels to get an idea of how to indoor culture. But why when you could seed random areas and map via GPS?. In this case all you would need is a nice controlled burn before your inoculation as well as sybiote host trees, As for California morels they prefer spruce + burn areas.

Another thing I was working with was spent beer malt. The stuff is colonized by the yeast so there's no competing bacteria so once you inoculate with an aggressive culture it handles itself cutting the need for tons of extra equipment. All you need is to get a hold of the local brewpub and ask the brew master if you could have some after his next session. Normally they'll give it away for free and enthusiastically if you're going to be doing something cool with it.

MB3MB3

I don't have Paul's other books but I can tell you that The one I referenced is a great read and contains lots of practical as well as technical information. Also there are a few chapters that push mycelium running but nowadays I've been looking more and more into it.


I really want to start the mass cultures because I would love to have my garden running as full a myco/micro community as possible. I was going nuts when I saw Pictures of deliriums raised beds popping fungus from the mulch.


Gaston

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by epsilon

Theres A woman who makea a killing on oysters here in riverside co. ...

Yes, a customer of mine.

You mentioned pre-inoculated trees, but they are expecting environments far different from the U.S. southwest.

To brew the chants ... if you took some college courses in bio-chem then basically it's an investment in stainless steel. I might give it a try.

[ChrisK]

I was thinking of using spent grain from my brew sessions as well. One point of clarification, the grain is removed long before the brewing yeast is added. However, it is pasteurized by the end of the final mash step.

Originally Posted by epsilon

Another thing I was working with was spent beer malt. The stuff is colonized by the yeast so there's no competing bacteria so once you inoculate with an aggressive culture it handles itself cutting the need for tons of extra equipment. All you need is to get a hold of the local brewpub and ask the brew master if you could have some after his next session. Normally they'll give it away for free and enthusiastically if you're going to be doing something cool with it.

Gaston

[Delerium]

Sorry if i am hijacking this thread. But you all seem to have extensive knowledge on mushrooms and I have been trying to ID what i thought was portabella's. These started showing up last year and originally i thought it was Agaricus californicus. Then it started showing up yet again - and it sure looked like Portabella mushrooms and was hoping to get some feedback from mushroom guru's but don't think anyone has seen the new post. I went searching on Shroomery.org to find some answers and so far the replies have been towards Agaricus bisporus - which has me thrilled because these Portabella's are gaining more ground and popping around in different places where it originally started. What's really interesting is these mushrooms seem more aggressively spreading around than the Oysters i deposited from stem cuttings. Anyhow 2nd opinions appreciated.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/show...5/fpart/1/vc/1

http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....&postcount=156

[epsilon]

Those look like your common brown garden mushrooms, I wouldn't think you were growing portabellos unless you had a horse manure casing, which brings me to the next question, did you recently lay down a layer of some kind of poop?

I tend to steer away from agarics because theres been a lot of accidental poisonings in so cal over the last few years.

It reminds me of a few in the san bernardino/riverside co, It could be a horse mushroom(I really don't think it is) it could be bisporus (very possibly), it looks like a lot of the fungus that I've found in the area, The good thing is, if you're wrong and it's californicus, it won't kill you straight off and always check new flushes against the definition. But like it was said using KOH is a good way to arrive at an ID.

You could possibly send a few pics to Michael Kuo at http://www.mushroomexpert.com/

in fact

you might want to check your info against this page

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/agaricus_bisporus.html

and definitely check your spores.

Gaston

PS. you wouldn't mind sharing some spawn for compost purposes in the future would you?

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by epsilon

Those look like your common brown garden mushrooms, I wouldn't think you were growing portabellos unless you had a horse manure casing, which brings me to the next question, did you recently lay down a layer of some kind of poop?

No poop. But i did layer lots of fresh unbroken kitchen waste and banana leaves (which i read is a great substrate for Oysters). I went against the advice of not composting banana leaves as they take a long time to breakdown and i was thinking maybe mushrooms would probably do great. I usually collect kitchen waste in 5 gal buckets (as they get full) i dump it right in to the bed and bury it (usually work in sections) and let it break down like that rather than in the compost bin. What i throw in the compost bin is usually all the really fine stuff (like Juicing leftovers), coffee grounds, and Oyster mycelium i grow in cardboard and paper waste etc.

I tend to steer away from agarics because theres been a lot of accidental poisonings in so cal over the last few years.

It reminds me of a few in the san bernardino/riverside co, It could be a horse mushroom(I really don't think it is) it could be bisporus (very possibly), it looks like a lot of the fungus that I've found in the area, The good thing is, if you're wrong and it's californicus, it won't kill you straight off and always check new flushes against the definition. But like it was said using KOH is a good way to arrive at an ID.

2nd picture shows some showing up from the soil in early January. They were flushing from beneath the soil level. Some showed up in the Nov the previous year and now in March. Seems to be spreading further out also. Plants in this bed are growing absolutely amazing.

You could possibly send a few pics to Michael Kuo at http://www.mushroomexpert.com/

in fact

you might want to check your info against this page

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/agaricus_bisporus.html

and definitely check your spores.

Gaston

PS. you wouldn't mind sharing some spawn for compost purposes in the future would you?

tell me how and i will I am very new at this but learning as i go

[RootLoops]

listen to what alan rockefeller tells you, he knows what he's talking about. in that thread you posted he suggests bisporous so i would start with checking the key for agaricus mushrooms against what you have. i'm not an expert at all with i.d.'s i can determine oysters and chanterelles, reishi that's about it but i know that one is an agaricus, and the almond smell is definitely a good sign. i once found a prince mushroom in a horse pastures stable cleanings pile, it had the sweetest smell i couldn't quite place until i compared it with some almond scented stuff at the store.

get as many spore prints as you can, if they are worth keeping i'd be glad to culture them for you and send you some back to work with, that is if you don't have the stuff to do it there.

oyster mushrooms would tear through those banana leaves in no time, feed any woody waste you have to oysters and they'll make quick work of it

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by RootLoops

listen to what alan rockefeller tells you, he knows what he's talking about. in that thread you posted he suggests bisporous so i would start with checking the key for agaricus mushrooms against what you have. i'm not an expert at all with i.d.'s i can determine oysters and chanterelles, reishi that's about it but i know that one is an agaricus, and the almond smell is definitely a good sign. i once found a prince mushroom in a horse pastures stable cleanings pile, it had the sweetest smell i couldn't quite place until i compared it with some almond scented stuff at the store.

get as many spore prints as you can, if they are worth keeping i'd be glad to culture them for you and send you some back to work with, that is if you don't have the stuff to do it there.

oyster mushrooms would tear through those banana leaves in no time, feed any woody waste you have to oysters and they'll make quick work of it

Yeah Alan Rockefellers Id made me quite happy . Only thing is i don't have a microscope to check if its bisporous. I guess i might have to start looking for used microscopes. Yeah these mushrooms smell so almondy/earthy. I was tempted to eat a small piece but my wife gave me that no no look! I was also the ginipig for our first Oyster mushrooms when we were growing them earlier this year. I will get some spore prints and send some your way. I've watched a few videos on youtube on making spore prints. But let me know if there is better instructions out there. The one I've watched is the method using Tin foil.

I am sure these Mushrooms will keep coming back.

[RootLoops]

however you can get them will work. i usually put a cap on a clean piece of foil and cover it with a bowl to keep wind from blowing on the cap. leave it there for a few hours, three maybe four, not too long though. after that it should be pretty thick with spores

[Delerium]

How would you know if the Cap has released its spores? What size cap would be best for the spore print?

[RootLoops]

you'll see them on the foil, they will be a dark disc against the shiny foil. i would print the largest ones, but any will do it only takes a little bit

[Delerium]

Okay thanks! Will give it a try today.

[RootLoops]

were you able to collect any spores? do you own a pressure cooker? also i found this, very interesting read about cultivating morels:

http://www.thefarm.org/mushroom/morel.html