Mushroom Garden Patches by Terri Marie Beauséjour Copyright 1999, all rights reserved. Have you ever considered growing mushrooms in your garden? In fact, many varieties will thrive nicely with little or no maintenance. Agaricus species (the Portobello, the Prince, the Horse Mushroom, etc.) are adaptable to grassy areas among trees. Edible Tricholomas growing in a Garden in Thailand. Intrigued? You should begin by taking a fresh view of your garden or landscape from a new perspective; analyze its "fungamentals." Note conditions of sun and shade, wind and humidity. The beautiful irony is that many substrates suitable for fungi are also beneficial to the garden itself, and most can be obtained for little or no investment, as they are often considered "waste materials" or by-products. Once you have considered the possibilities, you should determine what mushroom varieties are suitable and desirable. Because you will more quickly analyze and interpret the conditions and microclimates which favor their growth.
Mycology Resources Fatguy's Agar Technique Agar inoculation has been used for cultivation mushrooms as well as bacteria and molds for several years. The key to using an agar solution in cultivating mushrooms is sterility. Keeping the work surface and your hands clean and free of contaminants is the most important thing in using agar. I recommend that a HEPA system be used but since most people that use this forum cannot afford one, a glove box can be successfully used or a homemade HEPA design (what I use) will work. Choosing an agar solution to work with should be pretty easy. Agar production and pouring I use a Malt Extract Agar (MEA) solution that is shipped to me in a powder form. -Mix 50 grams of MEA (7 Tablespoons) for each liter of water. You can use a Mason Jar as a container to mix and autoclave the solution. Here is an important point: Unless you have a container that will hold about 2 liters of solution for each liter that you want to make, I would suggest that you make 1/2 liter batches of the agar solution.
Mushrooms, Fungi, Mycology Growth on Agar Perhaps this will be the year when you devote a corner of your garden to growing your own portabellas, criminis, shitakes, shaggy manes, Lepiotas, oysters, enokitakes. In this column we will give a basic outline of mushroom cultivation techniques and try to answer your questions about cultivation. Each article will briefly cover a different aspect of mushroom cultivation: I hope cultivation corner will provide stimulus and help you establish your own cultivation corner. I. The first phase of mushroom cultivation is the isolation of a pure culture of mycelium. PD(Y)A should be sterilized for 45 minutes at 15 pounds pressure. Potato Dextrose (Yeast) Agar (PD(Y)A): Potato Water 1 liter Dextrose 10 grams Nutritional Yeast or Yeast Extract 1-3 grams (optional) Agar- agar 20 grams Potato water is prepared by boiling a large, washed but not peeled, thinly sliced potato in water for one hour. Commonly used spore isolation techniques include: A. B. Next: Growing Mushrooms on Grain
MycoKey home Coffee Grinds to Mushrooms: A How to Guide | LunarHarvest Yup. I’m not pulling your leg and I’m not kidding you around; oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are a species of fungus that can digest coffee grinds, including the filters that they are often discarded with, and produce reliable crops of mushrooms. I was skeptical at first but after doing what seemed to be no more than a month casually searching through online do-it-yourself blogs and investigating companies which distribute mushroom kits and spawn (such as The Mushroom Patch) I had the confidence to give it a shot. I was rewarded with not only beautiful and tasty oyster mushrooms but an acquired set of skills that I can now use to develop further cultivating techniques for this sadly underappreciated crop. Approximately one month after mixing together the coffee grinds and mycelium together, the oyster mushrooms are well into their first flush. But why would you want to grow your own mushrooms? Step 1. Chances are, there is a coffee shop near where you live. Like this:
Mushroom ID's Mushroomers ClubA Successful Story of Blue Oyster and Shiitake Mushrooms Cultivation ~ mushroomers club This is a guest post by Devon Olsen, an active member of forums (permies.com and shroomotopia.net) on permaculture and fungi cultivation. This is the story of his first attempts in cultivating Blue Oyster and Shiitake mushrooms. His story is interesting and was posted here with the intention to help some people out there in their first trials of cultivating such types of mushrooms. I guess mushrooms have always been kinda cool, but ive never really felt fascinated about them per se, but about a year ago i found a thread on permies.com about growing Oyster Mushrooms on an old phone book i think it was. Learn more about Oyster mushroom cultivation reading How To Grow Oyster Mushrooms on Logs or the simple plastic bag cultivation of oyster mushrooms by checking my post How To Transform Paper Into Food there you'll find links to a more detailed cultivation method of oyster mushrooms.
Using a Microscope: Viewing and Measuring Spores Using a Microscope: Viewing and Measuring Spores by Michael Kuo Observing spores, and measuring them, is the easiest of the various microscope routines involved in mycology. You want to measure mature spores since, like other parts of a mushroom, spores are little before they are big. Tap the spore dust off the razor blade, onto a clean slide. Now put the slide on your microscope's stage. Sketch and describe the appearance of spores in your journal. If you can't get a spore print out of your mushroom, you may still be able to see spores by taking a single gill and mounting it in a Melzer's "crush mount" (press on the cover slip with a pencil eraser, gently crushing and stretching out the gill). Spore Shapes The graphic below is meant to give you a broad sense of spore shapes, but it only represents the tip of the iceberg, including some of the shapes most commonly encountered under the microscope. Spore Surfaces Cite this page as: Kuo, M. (2006, February). © MushroomExpert.Com