Fruiting process 1

I started the fruiting process a couple of days ago, on December 1, 2013. The straw casing was damp, warmish, and heavy with mycelium.

I mixed the bag of soil with the smaller bag of fruit fly casings, added one liter of water, and then microwaved the resulting mud for ~15 minutes until it was hot and sterile.

When it cooled to room temperature (after much mixing with a fork and gloved hands), I spread it over the top of the straw and then twisted the bag closed. When white, fluffy mycelium start to appear on top of the soil, then it will be time to expose the box to light and finish the fruiting process.

(Pics to come.)

Casing after 6 days

The straw is still damp and showing a few fluffy bits on the surface. Not much change. I will place a heating pad under the box and check again in a few more days.

Casing after 4 days

Mycelium is already beginning to show on top of the straw casing. I will check again in two days and then mix or proceed to the next step.

Casing the mushrooms

The mushrooms have been in the rye for 33 days now...much longer than anticipated. I'm starting out on the second phase now, ready or not.

The second phase is sterilizing the straw (casing) and introducing the developed mycelium to it. This involves boiling the straw in a large pot and then letting it cool down to room temperature while minimizing contact to outside contaminants.

Sterilized straw, cooling.

Then the mycelium needs to be broken up with a sterile knife. It's pretty much solid white stuff halfway down by now.

Next, mix the straw with the mycelium culture in a large plastic bag and pat it into the "mushbox", which is basically a cardboard box with a plastic dome which fits inside. Wait 5-10 days before the fruiting period...we shall see.

Mycelium mixed with sterile straw, 02NOV2013

Mycelium, 11 days

This shows the mycelium progress in the rye eleven days after inoculation. The white stuff is the fungus colony. In a few days I should be able to transfer it into its "fruiting" environment, which consists of sterilized straw, casing soil, and casing starter.

Mycelium developing

Some mycelium is beginning to develop in the rye grain jar. It isn't very impressive yet and it's been delayed due to cool weather, but it's coming along. It looks like little fluffs of cotton wool. I will add pictures when it develops a bit more.

Inoculation, day 4

No mycelium yet on the rye grains. I added another 2cc of spore solution to the mix.

In the meantime, my outdoor test box is growing mycelium like mad after all the early autumn rain, but it isn't producing much fruit.

Patience.

Inoculating the rye

The mushroom spores came today. I opted for a mushroom syringe, which is a 10cc syringe full of mushroom spores suspended in sterile water, rather than a mushroom print, which is a foil (or paper) which has mushroom spores dropped on its surface. The syringe seemed to be simpler for a beginner.

To begin, I arranged my syringe, gloves, isopropyl alcohol (70%), cotton balls, and jar of rye seeds on my sterile surface.

Rye seeds (sterilized), syringe, gloves, bottle of alcohol.

Then I opened up the syringe, injected about 3 cc of suspended spores into the jar, and shook the whole thing lightly until it was mixed.

It was difficult. The jar lid had four holes in it, so theoretically I should have been able to inject 1cc into each hole evenly, but there was a white covering which hides the holes in the metal lid. It is not a good idea to remove the covering since it blocks unfriendly bacteria and fungi from the culture. There was a lot of random stabbing before I hit a hole in the lid.

I think I got enough into the jar to get a decent culture. If not, I have enough left over to try again.

I put the inoculated rye jar in a warm, draft-free, unlit environment. We shall see what happens within the week.

Mushrooms?

I like mushrooms, yes, I do.

Some kind friends gave me a mushroom-growing kit a while back, and I successfully grew a very cool batch of oyster mushrooms that I documented daily and then devoured. (The mushrooms, not the documentation.) I also devoured a couple of books about mushrooms and the fungi kingdom in general and started reading about mushrooms on various websites during my bored-at-work times.

Then I got to thinking about this and that and the other thing and wondered if it was possible to grow my own "magic" mushrooms. The answer appears to be yes. I ordered some supplies, read a bit more, and now...well, we shall see.

Mushroom kit. The large burlap bag contains straw. The bag of brown stuff is fertilizer (sterilized horse manure, to be specific). The jar on the right contains sterile rye seeds. There is a spray bottle for watering behind it. It's all packed into a "mushbox", which is basically a cardboard box with a clear plastic dome over it (not pictured.)