My ADHD struck over the weekend and I want to revisit mushroom-growing in a class at DMS. I’ve already ordered liquid cultures for blue & pink oysters as well as reishi. My plan is to grow these out (can be done in a short kickoff class), which will take a few weeks from what I gather. After they’re ready we would have a class where we prepare and inoculate bags of rye (oysters) and sawdust (reishi), each of which attendees would take home and babysit.
If you’re interested, please chime in below and I’ll try to firm things up.
Excellent! I was also planning on putting up a mushroom growing class. I’ve already sterilized 8 jars and 1 bag of hardwood / soy hulls (mushroom growing media). I also received syringes of blue oyster and lion’s mane spores, ready to inoculate the jars this weekend. If that test works I’m planning on putting up a mushroom class in about a month. The class materials are on the Committee network drive so there’s no need to come up with a new syllabus. @mdredmond stop by this Sunday around 2:30pm if you want to inoculate some jars with me, and I can show you the class materials.
Sure! Can we inoculate a jar of liquid media with a tiny squirt of your lion’s mane and try to expand it? I can prepare and sterilize it tomorrow in my pressure cooker.
Yes great idea. I was thinking about keeping some liquid media on hand so we don’t have to keep buying syringes from North Spore. However I haven’t prepared any media yet.
On Sunday I innoculated one 3 lb grow bag with Lions Mane, and two ball jars with pink oyster. If these are successful then I’ll put the mushroom growing class on the calendar. Wanted to make sure the substrate is still good first.
Today I drove over to Unicorn Bags, who were kind enough to donate several dozen bags for our class(es). They manufacture on-site starting with plastic pellets and ending with filter application - and I got a tour of the entire operation. VERY impressive. They run 24 hours a day, producing 95,000 bags per day, IIRC.
Update… The Lion’s Mane I inoculated a couple weeks ago is coming along nicely… You can see the white mycelium in the picture. The two jars of Pink Oyster were inoculated at the same time but I can’t see any mycelium yet. @mdredmond and I are working on putting together a class once we have the technique down and we’re sure we can get it to work! Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we receive supplies and attempt to grow liquid cultures.
The Lion’s Mane looks fantastic and I regret not ordering any. I will soon.
I just filled four blocks with dry mix and will hydrate and sterilize in the morning. Two with wheat bran added to master’s mix and two without. Plan is to do blue and pink oyster in each.
I’d love to start experimenting with adding mineral supplements (like a quarter gram of a broad human mineral supplement), etc. to the water in the mix to see if it affects yields. Seems like this might better simulate wood in soil, which unsurprisingly is where wood-loving mushrooms grow.
So cool!! Love the details, such an interesting project Do human mineral supplements affect the nutritional content of the mushrooms, or just their yield?
