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I never tried to grow my own mushrooms, but the hardest part seems to be the actual growing of the mycelium with all the involved cleanliness, usage of needles,

I never tried to grow my own mushrooms, but the hardest part seems to be the actual growing of the mycelium with all the involved cleanliness, usage of needles, autoclaves and so on, right? The actual "container", which keeps the right amount of light and humidity and air circulation, can be build and maintained fairly easily. At least that's why i got from reading a little bit about this.

jayphen 4y ago
Indeed, the hardest part is inoculating without introducing contaminants that will out-compete the mycelium (typically trich). However, this is relatively simple and cheap to do at home — especially using a technique called uncle Ben’s tek. As it happens, pre-packaged rice is the perfect sterile environment for mycelium growth. Once successfully inoculated, it’s basically a matter of mixing the mycelium with substrate (wood chips or coir depending on the strain) in a container with a lid that allows minimal airflow (a plastic tub for example) and waiting. The process is really quite simple, and I’ve harvested kilograms of mushrooms with an initial outlay of around $30. Once you have mushrooms, you have spores, and the recurring cost is only substrate (and uncle Ben’s bags or grains, jars, pressure cooker if you want to sterilise them yourself).
citruscomputing 4y ago
Yeah, 1000%. I've grown almost half the species they list. The hard (and fun) part is agar work to clean up the culture, sterilizing the grain, and keeping it sterile as you inoculate it, knowing when a bag has gone bad, etc. Fruiting it is easy in comparison. Like, cut some slits in the bag and mist it, with a trash bag over it if you want to be fancy. Mushroom stand at former local farmers market sold said blocks direct to consumer, and they'll give you a hell of a lot more than these ones. I do have my own fruiting chamber, but it's not necessary. The main advantage of this thing (which is no small feat!) is that it looks pretty, unlike a mottled plastic bag, potentially with another bag over it. I can absolutely see a place for it as a fun, living table piece that gives you food. Also once you buy this thing you have an incentive to keep buying their blocks. I have never been impressed with "smart" fruiting chambers -- they just play up how ~hard~ growing mushrooms is and then do the easy part for you and claim it's solved. Call me when a chamber like this can detect mold better than my nose and eyes. THAT I'll shell out money for. It sucks to have mold sporulate, contaminating everything, before you know it's happened. Mushrooms want to grow! And once you've gotten to the point where they're the only thing growing, you're golden. Also, none of this is that hard if you read and learn! The mushrooms will tell you exactly where you went wrong, and there's TONS of info out there to get the hobby grower started. I highly suggest Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, and reading up on The Shroomery (lot of good stuff in the gourmet forum, some stuff that's common between gourmet and magic, like agar or grain prep is in the other cultivation forum).
- camtarn 4y ago
  There are even mail order services which will send you a pretty box with a pre inoculated block in it. Open the packaging, keep it under your table and check it so often, and you get tons of mushrooms. It's really fun. The utility of this device is extremely questionable, but I can't deny that it's really pretty and a good conversation starter.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Growing Gourmet and Medicinal by PS is an amazing resource and it’s stunning to me that such a valuable book is only $40 or so. Even if you aren’t growing at the moment, if you’re interested in mushrooms it’s such a great buy.
pavel_lishin 4y ago
Yeah, it sounds like you order "blocks" to place in the box, and then you harvest the mushrooms once they grow - much like other commercial mushroom kits, it sounds like large parts of it are single-use. Which is fine, I guess, but I thought this was going to be something that would let me order one thing, and continually and easily grow-and-harvest mushrooms in perpetuity.
xeddit 4y ago
If you think of mushrooms as a cycle, you can "buy in" right before they produce the mushroom bodies from pre-colonised blocks of grain. You're correct, at this point all the hard work has been done and the purpose of the 'container' is to build up humidity and co2, it can even be as simple as a plastic bin bag. This is the quick, easy and expensive way in my understanding, you make it cheap and time consuming by creating, sterilizing and inoculating those containers of grain yourself. It's worth doing if you plan on growing more, but if you just want to get started then buy the pre-sterilised or pre-colonised grain.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
>involved cleanliness, usage of needles, autoclaves and so on, right? Most of the cleanliness is overblown. It makes sense if you are running a commercial operation, selling a starter, but less important if you can tolerate some failures. I had a friend who grew 20x 5 gallon buckets at a time and this was is process: 1) Boil grain and and put it in mason jars in the kitchen 2) Cut a piece from the inside of a mushroom and add it to the grain in the kitchen 3) wait until it grows 4) Fill a 50 gallon trash can with wood chips 5) Pour boiling water into the trashcan outside 6) Transfer woodchips and grain to 5 gallon bucket in a dirty greenhouse As you can imagine, this wasn't a very sterile process, but it worked fine for hundreds of pounds of Oysters.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  It's worth noting that this works for oysters almost exclusively, because they are voracious fast-growers. Most other species do not grow as quickly and cannot outcompete contaminants and must have a sterile environment to have any kind of decent end result.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
If you have a pressure cooker it's not very difficult.You buy the spores in syringes and inject them into the sterilized jars. Sterilize the needle before each injection and generally keep the space clean. I have done several batches and haven't had problems with contamination so far. You just go through a few weeks of self doubt until the mycelium gets visible.

jayphen 4y ago

Indeed, the hardest part is inoculating without introducing contaminants that will out-compete the mycelium (typically trich). However, this is relatively simple and cheap to do at home — especially using a technique called uncle Ben’s tek. As it happens, pre-packaged rice is the perfect sterile environment for mycelium growth. Once successfully inoculated, it’s basically a matter of mixing the mycelium with substrate (wood chips or coir depending on the strain) in a container with a lid that allows minimal airflow (a plastic tub for example) and waiting. The process is really quite simple, and I’ve harvested kilograms of mushrooms with an initial outlay of around $30. Once you have mushrooms, you have spores, and the recurring cost is only substrate (and uncle Ben’s bags or grains, jars, pressure cooker if you want to sterilise them yourself).

citruscomputing 4y ago

Yeah, 1000%. I've grown almost half the species they list. The hard (and fun) part is agar work to clean up the culture, sterilizing the grain, and keeping it sterile as you inoculate it, knowing when a bag has gone bad, etc. Fruiting it is easy in comparison. Like, cut some slits in the bag and mist it, with a trash bag over it if you want to be fancy. Mushroom stand at former local farmers market sold said blocks direct to consumer, and they'll give you a hell of a lot more than these ones. I do have my own fruiting chamber, but it's not necessary. The main advantage of this thing (which is no small feat!) is that it looks pretty, unlike a mottled plastic bag, potentially with another bag over it. I can absolutely see a place for it as a fun, living table piece that gives you food. Also once you buy this thing you have an incentive to keep buying their blocks. I have never been impressed with "smart" fruiting chambers -- they just play up how ~hard~ growing mushrooms is and then do the easy part for you and claim it's solved. Call me when a chamber like this can detect mold better than my nose and eyes. THAT I'll shell out money for. It sucks to have mold sporulate, contaminating everything, before you know it's happened. Mushrooms want to grow! And once you've gotten to the point where they're the only thing growing, you're golden. Also, none of this is that hard if you read and learn! The mushrooms will tell you exactly where you went wrong, and there's TONS of info out there to get the hobby grower started. I highly suggest Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, and reading up on The Shroomery (lot of good stuff in the gourmet forum, some stuff that's common between gourmet and magic, like agar or grain prep is in the other cultivation forum).

camtarn 4y ago
There are even mail order services which will send you a pretty box with a pre inoculated block in it. Open the packaging, keep it under your table and check it so often, and you get tons of mushrooms. It's really fun. The utility of this device is extremely questionable, but I can't deny that it's really pretty and a good conversation starter.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal by PS is an amazing resource and it’s stunning to me that such a valuable book is only $40 or so. Even if you aren’t growing at the moment, if you’re interested in mushrooms it’s such a great buy.

pavel_lishin 4y ago

Yeah, it sounds like you order "blocks" to place in the box, and then you harvest the mushrooms once they grow - much like other commercial mushroom kits, it sounds like large parts of it are single-use. Which is fine, I guess, but I thought this was going to be something that would let me order one thing, and continually and easily grow-and-harvest mushrooms in perpetuity.

xeddit 4y ago

If you think of mushrooms as a cycle, you can "buy in" right before they produce the mushroom bodies from pre-colonised blocks of grain. You're correct, at this point all the hard work has been done and the purpose of the 'container' is to build up humidity and co2, it can even be as simple as a plastic bin bag. This is the quick, easy and expensive way in my understanding, you make it cheap and time consuming by creating, sterilizing and inoculating those containers of grain yourself. It's worth doing if you plan on growing more, but if you just want to get started then buy the pre-sterilised or pre-colonised grain.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

>involved cleanliness, usage of needles, autoclaves and so on, right? Most of the cleanliness is overblown. It makes sense if you are running a commercial operation, selling a starter, but less important if you can tolerate some failures. I had a friend who grew 20x 5 gallon buckets at a time and this was is process: 1) Boil grain and and put it in mason jars in the kitchen 2) Cut a piece from the inside of a mushroom and add it to the grain in the kitchen 3) wait until it grows 4) Fill a 50 gallon trash can with wood chips 5) Pour boiling water into the trashcan outside 6) Transfer woodchips and grain to 5 gallon bucket in a dirty greenhouse As you can imagine, this wasn't a very sterile process, but it worked fine for hundreds of pounds of Oysters.

idiotsecant 4y ago
It's worth noting that this works for oysters almost exclusively, because they are voracious fast-growers. Most other species do not grow as quickly and cannot outcompete contaminants and must have a sterile environment to have any kind of decent end result.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

If you have a pressure cooker it's not very difficult.You buy the spores in syringes and inject them into the sterilized jars. Sterilize the needle before each injection and generally keep the space clean. I have done several batches and haven't had problems with contamination so far. You just go through a few weeks of self doubt until the mycelium gets visible.