Mushrooms anyone?

[RootLoops]

fungi.com used to sell "spored oil" for use in chainsaws, the saw throws out bar and chain oil leaving spores behind. i looked on their site just now but i couldn't find it. it is indeed a thing though

[bower]

It was a lot of years ago I heard about it.. actually switched to using mineral oil in my chainsaw at the time, instead of that yukky pink stuff.. been using it ever since - sadly without spores!

[RootLoops]

it would be easy enough to spore your oil, each mushroom drops millions of spores you'd just have to collect them on tin foil or in the bottom of the bucket you'd mix the oil in. do oysters grow in your area? i have a good canuck friend who hunts mushrooms but he lives on the other side of canada i believe, vancouver area maybe? he said there is a desert on his side of the country. i'm not sure what species he hunts over there

[epsilon]

The spore Oil that fungi.com had was spores in either veggie or palm oil, but Paul Stammets recently joined the Inyourpalm# movement so he might have discontinued the product until he can find a suitable replacement.

I'd recommend for personal purposes using camellia Oil as if you look hard enough you can find it for about 10$ a pound, you could even use olive oil the plain stuff not virgin or evoo as a carrier but I'm not entirely sure about the cost effectiveness of it.


Getting the spores to start with is just as easy.
From Paul Stammets book: Growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms

Choose fairly mature mushrooms and submerge them in a 5-gallon bucket of water. A gram or two of table salt inhibits bacteria from growing while not substantially affecting the viability of the spores. With the addition of 50 milliliters of molasses, spores are stimulated into frenzied germination. After 4 hours of soaking, remove the mushrooms from the bucket. Most mushrooms will have released tens of thousands of spores. Allow the broth to sit for 24 to 48 hours at a temperature above 50°F (10°C) but under 80°F (26.7°C). In most cases, spores begin to germinate in minutes to hours, aggressively in search of new mates and nutrients. This slurry can be expanded by a factor of 10 in 48 hours.

Stamets, Paul (2011-07-13). Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Kindle Locations 813-818). Ten Speed Press. Kindle Edition.


Gaston

[MB3MB3]

i have had stamets' Mushroom Cultivator for a couple decades but been wanting Growing G&M Mushrooms for awhile... that paragraph makes me want it even more. what a good and simple tek that sounds like.

[bower]

RootLoops, We don't have oysters in the wild here. There's a relative known as Angel Wings (Pleurocybella porrigens, or used to be), but it has been delisted as an edible due to some reports of poisonings... I've collected a few but never got around to eating them, because they fruit at the same time as other favourites.

We have and hunt the mycorrhizal mushrooms - Golden Chanterelle, Winter Chanterelle, couple kinds of hedgehogs, Matsutake and relatives, and scattered boletes (the King, the Bay are faves). Season is fickle and short but much enjoyed.

Actually none of the mushrooms I usually collect are wood rotters, so their spores, alas, are of no use in my chain saw.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by epsilon

... Gaston

Thanks Gaston. I think on my back patio there is a 2' wide x 6' long x 7' high area that is out of direct sunlight which could become a mushroom cultivation area. Growing psychedelic mycelium was easy enough to do here in the southwest U.S. in the 1960's, but growing flora for food is now far more interesting.

[RootLoops]

ooooooh chants are my favorite!!!! i'm not a big fan of eating mushrooms due to the texture most of the time, even some morels a guy overnighted me didn't have a suitable texture but chants i can eat a mess of. they are almost like chicken with the flakiness of fish sometimes and other times it's harder to pin down.

here are some from last season, this season will begin after the big rains of may and theoretically will last til september but i have a hard time finding more than two or three flushes of them. in these pictures are mostly cantharellus variants but if you'll look closely you can see some bright orange cinnabarinus. in the other pics are black trumpets or craterellus, not sure the exact species. i haven't eaten one of those yet but they have the strongest apricot fragrance of the varieties i have found.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by RootLoops

ooooooh chants are my favorite!!!! i'm not a big fan of eating mushrooms due to the texture most of the time, even some morels a guy overnighted me didn't have a suitable texture but chants i can eat a mess of. they are almost like chicken with the flakiness of fish sometimes and other times it's harder to pin down.

Hmm ... now I just might think about being a factory ...

[RootLoops]

Originally Posted by epsilon

The spore Oil that fungi.com had was spores in either veggie or palm oil, but Paul Stammets recently joined the Inyourpalm# movement so he might have discontinued the product until he can find a suitable replacement.

I'd recommend for personal purposes using camellia Oil as if you look hard enough you can find it for about 10$ a pound, you could even use olive oil the plain stuff not virgin or evoo as a carrier but I'm not entirely sure about the cost effectiveness of it.


Getting the spores to start with is just as easy.
From Paul Stammets book: Growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms

Choose fairly mature mushrooms and submerge them in a 5-gallon bucket of water. A gram or two of table salt inhibits bacteria from growing while not substantially affecting the viability of the spores. With the addition of 50 milliliters of molasses, spores are stimulated into frenzied germination. After 4 hours of soaking, remove the mushrooms from the bucket. Most mushrooms will have released tens of thousands of spores. Allow the broth to sit for 24 to 48 hours at a temperature above 50°F (10°C) but under 80°F (26.7°C). In most cases, spores begin to germinate in minutes to hours, aggressively in search of new mates and nutrients. This slurry can be expanded by a factor of 10 in 48 hours.

Stamets, Paul (2011-07-13). Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Kindle Locations 813-818). Ten Speed Press. Kindle Edition.


Gaston

thanks for posting this!!! a five gallon bucket of liquid culture, this is perfect for what i want to do with oysters on our farm site when we start working over there. we just got approved for an NRCS high tunnel grant that includes irrigation, i plan to grow lots of mushrooms all around our place. there isn't much of a market here for funny looking mushrooms but their benefits to farming are well worth the work involved.

hermitian, definitely put that space to good use! how many logs would you be inoculating?

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by RootLoops

hermitian, definitely put that space to good use! how many logs would you be inoculating?

I've never grown mushrooms in private or commercial agriculture. A trial production for private use would be 8 linear feet, and for commercial would be 100 linear feet. I like all varieties of culinary mushrooms that are available from local sellers and have contemplated growing them for myself on a number of occasions. The mention of a flora with the texture and flavor intensity of chicken sparks my commercial interest. I could invest $10k in such a commercial project.

[RootLoops]

no one has been able to crack cultivated chanterelles as far as i know, they are Mycorrhizal so they depend on a relationship with the roots of trees. it's the reason they fetch such a high price($30-60 per lb given the right market), people have to forage them and their flushes are sporadic and fleeting. someone has been able to cultivate black morels but last i heard they had patented their technique and weren't spilling the beans.

cultivated shiitake or oysters from logs are excellent, indoor cultivated ones are a bit lower quality in comparison but still very good to eat. you could get a very good start with 10 grand i would imagine but i've never priced out anything of a commercial scale. check out this link, this guy has a really nice place going in washington state:

http://www.mushroomvideos.com/Mountain-Mushroom-Farm

[ChrisK]

This might be of interest.

Mushroom growing handbooks:

http://www.alohamedicinals.com/mushroombook1.zip

http://www.alohamedicinals.com/mushroombook2.zip

[Hermitian]

In southern California, I know that mushroom farms are numerous because their compost is in plentiful supply. I'm pretty sure I could duplicate what they are doing on a small scale to meet my own needs. On the otherhand, with more than a high school education I wonder if I could exceed what they are doing for commercial gain?

[RootLoops]

you could very well do it, though there is a lot of science behind mushrooms it boils down to recipes and doing the work. if you could find an area that is underserved in the fresh mushroom category you could do very well. in my area most people are scared of any mushroom that isn't a white button or portobella. you need some expensive lab equipment like a laminar flow hood, sterilizers like an all american 75x, various lab supplies for culturing. you can also go the route of expanding spawn from a place like fungi.com and cut out the lab supplies but you still need the flow hood and sterilizers to expand the grain.