Getting a bit of a late start on growing mushrooms this year. I imagined I would have all the liquid culture jars completed by now, if not the grain spawn, and be working on getting the media colonized.
If that sounds like mumbo-jumbo to you, don’t worry, I will explain as I go along.
This is my cultivated mushroom diary. As it says on the landing page that pulls all these posts together, I took a break from mushrooms over the winter this year, but getting back into the swing of it now.
For starters, I needed to take stock of what I have. I may have been taking a break over the winter, but it doesn’t mean I am starting from scratch. For instance, I have a lovely stropharia patch that will come back year after year, as long as it is treated properly. I have several (probably too many) mushroom logs, colonized with a variety of mycelium. I also have leftover stock of liquid culture, which I can expand into more stock, and then do buckets or jars on hardwood sawdust (medium).
Turns out, I have 9 syringes of culture, two of them duplicates, and one that is a bit redundant, considering it’s the winecaps (stropharia rugosa-annulota) and those are already in with my raspberries, in a patch under a Japanese maple, and in a window box of its own.
Plans for this year:
Understand that this is largely off the top of my head and things always change as the process moves along.
Blewits and Rasperries
Last summer, my friend Bryan gave me a few canes off his black raspberry plant and they over-wintered beautifully. I don’t think I am going to get much in the line of fruit this year, but it seems to be putting off a whole bunch of new growth that should fruit next year.
Since the other raspberry plant pairs brilliantly with winecaps, I want to try blewits with this one.
Oyster mushrooms in buckets
This is a highly productive system, and there is no reason to mess with something that just works.
I will need to either extract some of the mycelium from the logs or get some new syringes. Probably the latter since it is much lower risk of contamination.
I should plan to order:
- golden and pink (warm weather mushrooms),
- blue,
- and something plain, maybe sporeless.
Lots of Lion's Mane
I already have some lion’s mane culture, so I just have to multiply it out to get a sufficient amount to add sawdust jars and buckets to the existing supply on logs.
The thing with logs is they really only flush (produce fruit) maybe a couple of times a year. Sawdust lets me do two or three flushes (each smaller than the last, usually), before repurposing the media into another form (mostly more logs).