Trying my hand at mycoculture
Dec. 1st, 2011 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halifaxearthtechI'm reading Mycellium Running by Michael Stamets (if you haven't seen Six Ways Mushrooms can Save the World GO! Take a look at it!
What I like about Mycellium Running is that Stamets lists ways to grow mushrooms without the energy cost and finickyness of sterilizing culture, but instead growing mushrooms more like how you would plants, or how they would grow in their woodland habitats: by encouraging growth and then dividing roots and planting them into suitable environments.
In September I was given four bags of hardwood dowels innoculated with edible mushroom spawn from Adam LeBlanc of Margaree Mushrooms in return for some seeds and scion I gave him for his garden. I was instructed to drill holes in hardwood logs, cut between 1 and 6 months before (to allow time for the plant's immune system to die, but before competing fungi could beat off the mushrooms I wanted. I duly innoculated about 6 logs but I guess the environment in my basement was too dry and nothing too much happened.
A week ago I was cleaning out my workshop and found the remaining three bags of spawn. Some mushrooms had managed to burst forth from the plastic bags (I stir-fried them) and the plugs looked quite vital and hardly used up. So I've boiled straw for ten minutes to sterilize it, mixed it with the plugs, and am keeping the straw in paper bags, and then in a plastic food container in my kitchen.
These are they after 5 days. The mycellium is clearly colonizing the straw fast and furiously. From these, I hope to transfer the mycellium to some burlap bags filled with damp woodchips and hopefully harvest mushrooms from these. These bags contain oyster mushrooms.
What I like about Mycellium Running is that Stamets lists ways to grow mushrooms without the energy cost and finickyness of sterilizing culture, but instead growing mushrooms more like how you would plants, or how they would grow in their woodland habitats: by encouraging growth and then dividing roots and planting them into suitable environments.
In September I was given four bags of hardwood dowels innoculated with edible mushroom spawn from Adam LeBlanc of Margaree Mushrooms in return for some seeds and scion I gave him for his garden. I was instructed to drill holes in hardwood logs, cut between 1 and 6 months before (to allow time for the plant's immune system to die, but before competing fungi could beat off the mushrooms I wanted. I duly innoculated about 6 logs but I guess the environment in my basement was too dry and nothing too much happened.
A week ago I was cleaning out my workshop and found the remaining three bags of spawn. Some mushrooms had managed to burst forth from the plastic bags (I stir-fried them) and the plugs looked quite vital and hardly used up. So I've boiled straw for ten minutes to sterilize it, mixed it with the plugs, and am keeping the straw in paper bags, and then in a plastic food container in my kitchen.
These are they after 5 days. The mycellium is clearly colonizing the straw fast and furiously. From these, I hope to transfer the mycellium to some burlap bags filled with damp woodchips and hopefully harvest mushrooms from these. These bags contain oyster mushrooms.
