Shdwdrgn

So my two bags of pink oysters, which haven't appeared to be doing much on anything, have suddenly pinned right behind the air vent on both bags. The first picture is a bunch of little guys like I expected it to start out as, but the second bag is one massive stem as wide as the cap! For reference, the air vent patch black clicks on these bags are about 1.25" wide.

Did I do something wrong in sealing the top of the bags, or is it common to see this happen right behind the vent? Maybe I put too much straw in the bags? It's hard to see in the pictures, but they seem pretty healthy, however there has been VERY little mycelial growth in these bags so far and it seems premature to start opening them up. Any suggestions?

I have some pink spawn which was being expanded out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels. There's been good growth and since a couple weeks ago the jar appeared to be completely colonized (at which time I left one jar sitting and moved another jar to a couple fruiting bags). It's been sitting on the basement floor since then, but I've noticed some pink coloration that seems to have gone throughout the jar, and there seems to be a bit of the pink also in the fruiting bags.

I prepared some jars of blue oyster spawn at the same time, using the same batch of rye and popcorn, and those jars are still snow white. This has me wondering, could I have possibly gotten contamination ONLY in the pink oyster jars while all of the blue oyster jars somehow escaped contamination? Or is this pink color natural for pink oysters? It just seems like an awful big coincidence that only the pink oysters would get contaminated when everything was prepped together in the still-air box and there was definitely cross-exposure between the jars.

Since this is my first batch of oysters I'm just not sure what I should be expecting.

At the suggestion of another member I tried expanding my spawn on popcorn kernels. This involved boiling for about 20 minutes, drying, then pressure-canning for 90 minutes at 15psi. After cooling my spawn was divided between the jars, which were allowed to grow for a little over two weeks. On Monday I transferred the contents of a couple jars to fruiting bags with pasteurized straw and started seeing growth by the next day. I thought all was well.

On Wednesday, I started noticing some green stems. As I've been watching, this is actually growth from the popcorn kernels, and it's happening in all four bags! Now I'm quite frankly amazed that the cheapest generic popcorn from the store even has the capability to sprout, but after I put it through all that cooking I would have assumed it simply wasn't possible. I also wonder why it didn't start trying to grow in the original jar, and why it waited until it was in the bags?

So is there anything I should do about this? It will probably be at least another couple weeks before the mycelium is grown out enough to open some air holes for fruiting and I'm worried the corn will be trying to create its own holes before then, but maybe the bag is tougher than it looks. Anyway, any suggestions other than letting it go and waiting to see what happens?

tl;dr: Spawn grown on popcorn kernels, now popcorn is sprouting despite extensive cooking.

[Update] It's NOT the popcorn, there were other seeds in the straw!

I've lost track now of how long since I started on this, but I think it's been 2-3 weeks since I transferred my original spawn to grain jars? All of the jars have been fully colonized except for one jar of pink oysters, which fought against some kind of contamination but seems to have gotten going again. It had some good looking growth though, so I decided to use that jar plus one jar of blue oysters (but grown on popcorn kernels) for my first attempt at fruiting. If it is too weak and fails, well if was worth a shot and I wouldn't have gotten anything else from it anyway.

I'm using some 8" fruiting bags from ebay, and pasteurized chopped straw in a lime water bath overnight then let it drain today for about 2.5 hours. Each quart jar of spawn was split between two fruiting bags.

Now here comes the scary part... I didn't have room inside to work on this, and knew working with the straw was going to be very messy, so I set up a table in the yard. I wiped everything down with 91% ISO as I went, but being outside has me worried about the chances of contam. Guess we'll see?

So now I have four stuffed fruiting bags hanging out in the garage where it will be a little warmer than the basement. I had considered putting the bags in my garden but I'm worried about squirrels and such getting into them (especially when they start to fruit) so I figured the garage was safer. I'm expecting another 2-3 weeks of expansion before they're ready to fruit, but it's just a game of wait&see now. And assuming I get some mushrooms from this batch, I can bring it back full-circle and start a new batch of spawn (this time directly in the grain jars) from what grows.

One question I have for everyone... I have three more jars of spawn that are pretty well completely grown in (one popcorn and two rye berries). Should I put these in the refrigerator until I'm ready to transfer them to fruiting bags? I'm not sure how long they can survive at room temperature but I seem to recall they can hang out in the fridge for 3-4 months without any problem?

Usually we see some potholes at the end of the snow season which get repaired fairly quickly... but this year... oh boy. Seems like they didn't start showing up until all the rain hit, and then they were everywhere, and so far I've seen very few getting fixed (and some that were fixed have opened up again).

My SUV has been pulling hard to the right the last few weeks. I finally got a chance to jack it up today, checked the wheel bearings and A-frames as the common culprits. Instead what I found is the lower A-frame has actually been pulled over on one side by nearly 1/2". I moved it back to roughly where it's supposed to be so I'm not tearing up my tire until I can get in for a proper alignment, but sheesh, could we maybe get some crews out to start patching the worst of the potholes at least? Usually our fair city is so quick on getting these things fixed!

It's not much to look at yet, but my oyster spawn is doing nicely after only four days. I picked up some spawn off ebay for pink and blue oysters, not realizing just how tiny an amount 10g really was. Well I had already been reading about expanding spawn in grain jars, and was advised here to also try popcorn kernels in addition to the rye berries I had already ordered. I got seven jars cooked and sterilized last weekend and did the transfer in a still air box on Tuesday. What you are seeing in the pic below is the blue oyster spawn, of which the 10g was divided between three jars (the third one not pictured is another popcorn jar), so there was very little to start with in each jar. I'd say it's pretty happy though!

Once these jars are fully colonized I will be pasteurizing chopped straw in a cold water lime bath to set up my fruiting bags. I'm going to try splitting one jar of spawn between two fruiting bags to see how that goes. I know it's a bit thin, but obviously I'm in no big hurry and can wait for the fruiting bags to colonize.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pic...

I thought some folks might want to see an update on what I've been growing. For reference, I tried to grown button mushroom spawn on boiled cardboard, only to learn a few days later that this shouldn't be possible. Imagine my surprise when the mycelium started growing anyway!

So it's been about three weeks now and growth has been painfully slow, but then again they didn't really have any decent food. I also realized when I opened the container that there was still way too much moisture in the cardboard. Today I transferred what I could into grain jars to give it a better chance at growth. Basically I went through all the layers and peeled the cardboard apart, then tore off smaller chunks of anything that had decent growth on it. This was divided between a jar of popcorn kernels and a jar of rye berries, so I have a good chance of one or both jars really expanding the small amount of spawn I had available. Considering this was started from chopped stems I got at the grocery store, I'd say I'm doing pretty good so far!

I've started doing some reading on how to make the pasteurized compost for this type of mushroom, hoping to start picking up supplies next weekend to get it ready.

I just started noticing this happen today. For example I was reading posts in the mycology community and posts from comics started appearing at the top of the page. I'm assuming this is a bug but is there anything I can do about it from my end, or do I just have to wait for the next update? FYI I'm just on the desktop browser, not using any apps.

Four days ago I added some purchased oyster spawn to five jars containing popcorn or rye (after sterilizing of course). The next day I noticed these white spots on the kernels of only one jar. For reference, the pink oyster spawn in this jar was also added to a jar of rye, and there is no sign of these spots in that jar, so I believe the spawn itself was fine. Transfer was done in a still-air box, and this wasn't even the last jar I did, so I'm not really sure if it is contam or not?

One thing that strikes me (and I'm not sure if you can see the detail in this pic), I have seen white spots like this on sweet corn, which I believe is also a fungus, but the popcorn kernels were boiled for 20 minutes, dried for a couple hours, then put in a pressure cooker for 90 minutes at 15psi, so I don't know how any fungus would have remained in the jars?

Regardless, I was wondering if anyone had seen something like this before, and if the jar is likely a loss? The oyster spawn is actually growing growing, you can see one cluster starting right in the center, and it seems like it's cleaning the kernels that it expands to? This is my first time trying to expand spawn so I thought I'd ask for opinions on this...

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/581212

I had many expectations for today, but learning that mushrooms sweat wasn't one of them.

The scientists are still unsure why fungi might want to keep cool.

In their paper, the authors speculate that it might have something to do with creating optimal conditions for spore formation, or it may help fungi spread their spores — by altering the temperature, they might be causing tiny winds that can blow the spores around.

It’s also possible that this phenomenon is due to something else entirely. For example, evapotranspiration also increases humidity, and when asked if it’s possible that the fungi are trying to keep humid, and the cooling is simply a by-product, Casadevall said it was conceivable.

I love seeing these groups pop up everywhere! They are such a fantastic resource to help prevent deadly mistakes, but also great for learning more about the incredible variety of mushrooms all around us, many of which are too tiny to casually notice but contain such beauty. As a kid I would hunt morels with my grandpa and that probably inspired me to keep my eyes open. Several years ago I had some huge mushrooms pop up in my yard, and after getting a positive ID I fried them up and ate them. Sometimes you just get lucky with what the squirrels drag into your yard.

Now I've finally taken the next step to growing my own, and yesterday transferred my first starts of oyster mushrooms to grain jars. I also managed to start some cremini spawn on boiled cardboard, and just giving it a little more time before transferring that to grain jars as well. Can't wait to taste all the results!

Like Mastodon, Lemmy is a federated group of servers, however in order for a server (also known as an 'instance') to be aware of content from another instance, someone has to let that server know the community exists...

In my case, my home is on mander.xyz. If I go to the communities tab and search for Longmont, nothing comes up. From the post on reddit I knew that the home of this group is at "https://lemmy.ml/c/longmont" so I simply put that whole string in the community search, and that tells my server of its existence. Then I can immediately go back and search for "Longmont" again, and now the group shows up and allows me to subscribe to it.

And of course this works for any other communities you are interested in, but which aren't hosted on the Lemmy server you have an account with. Once you or someone else on your server has subscribed to a community, anyone else on your server will also now immediately see that community without needing the full path.