Reddit reviews Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
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Actually, in most cases it isn't, but it is pasteurized. Sterilization would make the medium insanely contamination-ridden, due to the lack of competing microbes. Once mold starts growing, you've gotta toss the medium completely. While this is probably a nice hippy-dippy way to sell mushrooms, there's no way it's going to maintain healthy flushes for long with a "tame" culture like agaricus bisporus. It just can't compete with molds like trichoderma, which is possibly the most common mold on earth. That's not counting the possibly hundreds of people touching the growth medium, throwing their trash in it, discarding unwanted mushrooms into the pile, and the like.
I've read a lot about it (I was once an aspiring mushroom farmer) and I believe it has something to do with pressure+heat killing fungal spores, but leaving beneficial bacterial endospores intact. Essentially, the bacteria and other microbes take up real estate until the fungus shows up, and then it moves into their turf and consumes them as well.
The interesting thing is that in commerical mushroom grows, pasteurization temps are reached naturally due to the size of manure piles. The mass of the piles coupled with the immense activity of microbes within them raises the internal temperature to anywhere between 140f-170f.
Source: Paul Stamets, The Mushroom Cultivator and Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms.
Edit
Here's some more places to find information about mushrooms, since I'm hardly an expert. I'm just a guy who reads a lot, essentially.
Books:
Those are the standard grow manuals, but if anyone has a suggestion for a more comprehensive or up-to-date manual, it'd be welcome. Mycelium Running is a great book if you're just looking for a fun read about mushrooms.
Websites:
Videos:
Hey friend! That's kind of a big question with a lot of detail. All the information is out there, but it can be tricky to find. I think we can all empathize with you there.
Generally speaking, all the concepts are the same, it's only the equipment that changes. Essentially, all you're doing is the following, without any of the details:
 
 
I usually advocate for getting a pressure cooker and beginning with grains/jars; but you said you were on a tight budget, so I'll give you some beginner-tier options to get the above accomplished. The caveat here is that they're by no means the best or least-risky methods, but you asked for a cheap way forward that is still effective, so that's what I'll give you. It would be impossible for me to list out every detail, so just ask me questions and I'll fill in the rest one thing at a time:
 
You could pasteurize prepared wood chip/sawdust mix (substrate) in a coffee can or plastic tub (with a lid) and buy pre-made spawn online. Spawn is ≈$10-25USD and comes as bags of grains or sawdust. You can find tubs all over the place for cheap. Then you just combine the two, wait for the substrate to colonize, and fruit from there (Steps 5-9).
You could also buy a grocery store Hericium mushroom, chop it up into slices, spread that out over moist cardboard, and let that colonize. This is a little more risky with Hericium (v. Pleurotus, which is much more aggressive). After it finishes, you would add that cardboard spawn to some pasteurized wood chip/sawdust mix in layers, then wait for it to finish colonizing before fruiting it (Steps 3-9).
Those are both cheap ways to start out, but don't skimp on the spawn.
Depending on the tote you use, you might need to make a ShotGun Fruiting Chamber (SGFC), which is just a tote with holes in it on all 6 sides, with some perlite or grow stone at the bottom. It's as expensive as it is to buy a tote. You'll need to find a drill and bit to make the holes. I can run you through that, too.
 
All of this is just a basic idea to point you in a direction given your low budget. It's slightly more risky, but cheap and easy. That's the tradeoff.
If you're in college, you might have access to a biology lab and be able to use their equipment. Glass Petri dishes, bio-safety cabinet, autoclave, possible supply of agar, etc. Let me know if you do and I'll walk you though some more advanced techniques that also meet your budget. All you'd have to do is buy a few bags at ≈$1USD each and either some liquid culture (≈$10), or even a store-bought mushroom will do.
 
That's a super rough, dirty version. People will probably yell at me, but that's ok. I can't type out a novel here, so just ask questions about what you don't understand and we'll go from there. If you need a source that takes you front to back, go to your college library and Inter-Library-Loan "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" or "Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation".
Cut a slab of agar out of a clean plate and cover that entirely with it. The mycelium knows which way is up and can easily emerge on top. The bacteria will remain trapped beneath. Source: Paul Stamets
It really depends on what kind of mushrooms you'd like to grow; I wouldn't suggest the white mushrooms you see at stores to grow first; they have some pretty specific requirements to grow that makes it difficult for the home cultivator. Shiitake are really simple to grow; get some oak logs with holes drilled in them, shove some spore plugs in it, and bam, in about a year's worth of time you'll have shiitake mushrooms and they will keep coming back for many years. (With more and more every year)
Also some mushroom tips:
Generally it's a good idea to watch videos and search for the kind of mushroom you want to grow; Paul Stamet's Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms is an awesome resource as well. You can also find a (not sure about the legality) free PDF version if you just search for it + pdf. It contains general growing information as well as specific cultivation tips of almost every mushroom you could want to grow.
But anyway, here's some things to consider:
Mushroom spores:
Mushrooms from Stores:
Hope this helps!
Buy a regional guide. Here are a few if you are in the US. It's important to know the terminology that goes along with mushroom hunting.
Also Use the links in the sidebar here, they will tell you the active mushrooms in your area. Once you do this do individual research on each one.
Regional guides
Alaska
Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams
Western US
All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest
Mushrooms Demystified This is an old book, while still useful it definitely needs updating.
The New Savory Wild Mushroom Also dated but made for the PNW
Midwestern US
Mushrooms of the Midwest
Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States
Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest
Southern US
Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide
Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States
Eastern US
Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians
Mushrooms of Northeast North America (This was out of print for awhile but it's they're supposed to be reprinting so the price will be normal again)
Mushrooms of Northeastern North America
Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America(Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America)
Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore
More specific guides
Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World
North American Boletes
Tricholomas of North America
Milk Mushrooms of North America
Waxcap Mushrooms of North America
Ascomycete of North America
Ascomycete in colour
Fungi of Switzerland: Vol. 1 Ascomycetes
PDFs
For Pholiotas
For Chlorophyllum
Websites that aren't in the sidebar
For Amanita
For coprinoids
For Ascos
MycoQuebec: they have a kickass app but it's In French
Messiah college this has a lot of weird species for polypores and other things
Cultivation
The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home (If your home is a 50,000 sq ft warehouse)
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
Mycology
The fifth kingdom beginner book, I would recommend this. It goes over fungal taxonomy Oomycota, Zygomycota and Eumycota. It also has ecology and fungi as food.
The kingdom fungi coffee table book it has general taxonomy of the kingdom but also very nice pictures.
Introduction to fungi Depends on your definition of beginner, this is bio and orgo heavy. Remember the fungi you see pop out of the ground (ascos and basidios) are only a tiny fraction of the kingdom.
Oh, cultivating mushrooms for food is another good skill. They'll grow (if you pick the right kind) on any kind of wood or paper scrap. They don't need soil or light, just a little water misting and ventilation. The spent growth medium also makes for fantastic compost and you may even get bonus mushrooms in your garden!
The main challenge in mushroom growing is sterile technique, since any environment that's good for mushrooms is also great for growing mold. Sterile technique takes practice, but the equipment needed is minimal. The main thing you need is a pressure cooker, which is also extremely useful for canning and cooking — essential prepper equipment, imo.
You can also use mushrooms to decontaminate soil — "mycoremediation". I can't speak to the effectiveness, nor the safety of eating the resulting mushrooms (I would throw them out; some organic molecules will be broken down, but not heavy metals). However in a survival situation, this could be a good way to get more usable land for plant cultivation.
Check out Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets. I recommend starting with oyster or shiitake. In fact you can buy prepackaged kits for growing these, which makes a good beginner project.
I would add pasteurized chopped cardboard or sawdust to the coffee grounds in a 50 / 50 mix. You will get a better block.
If you don't already have it, this book is worth the $30.
That warm tray looks like it will work just fine for this project.
In the future, I would recommend Pleurotus ostreatus (Blue Oyster) for cooler growing temperatures. It is an oyster, so it is aggressive and easy to grow, and it has a lower optimum temperature for colonization and fruiting.
There is a good book by Paul Stamets called Growing Medicinal and Gourmet Mushrooms. It contains break-downs of the optimum growing conditions of pretty much any kind of mushroom you could think of growing. If you want to continue with indoor growing, it is an incredible resource.
Warning: Stamets is a little crazy.
Read Paul Stamets book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, and also The Mushroom Cultivator which details a lot of info on spore storage and culture practises.
Its so easy to get one contam spore into whatever you're doing - ordinary air has so many contam spores in just 1cm^3, its almost impossible to work 100% sterile. But not to worry: the best we can do as cultivators is hold off the inevitable. A good cultivator will do what he or she can to work clean but all the time understands that all grows will ultimately end in contamination - thats just natures way.
The contaminations themselves often sporulate on the surface of cube spores which after finding residence on nutrient media will then 'piggy-back' using the spores which touch each other. The contaminations can often be 50 times smaller, and so can easily rest like a pest on the spores surface. An electron microscopy picture can really show you well what I'm trying to say here. They also reproduce far faster than their larger basidiospore cousins in the cubensis family, so can out compete them for the available resources that you have so kindly provided for them.
Its not that having a lot of spores in a syringe is a bad thing, its just that throughout my experience with cubes I've found that 'less is more' - the more spread out the spores are from each other, the more you can isolate the good strains and culture out the contams. :)
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets
This should get you as far as you'll ever want to go
You may or may not get some oysters ;)
Have you read Stamets' Growing the Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms?
https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Gourmet-Medicinal-Mushrooms-Stamets/dp/1580081754?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1580081754
Look into local chapters of the mycological society or mushroom hunting groups/clubs in your area. This site lists a few options. Looks like the one in Albion may be near-ish to you.
I've also found many of the links in the sidebar helpful, especially mushroom observer and the mushroom hunting and identification forum on The Shroomery. The Shroomery's ID forum is where I go to confirm my suspected ID's after keying out specimens on my own.
I use Mushrooms Demystified, by David Arora, as a my post collection ID book. It's both huge and dated (i think it's latest edition is from the early or mid 80's) so it's functionality as a field guide or the final word in ID is lacking. Even so, it is good to learn to work through dichotomous keys like the ones that it employs and it usually gets you headed in the right direction. Other guides like Rogers Mushrooms, All the Rain Promises and More, and The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms are good resources, too (I'm sure other folks can add to this list, I'm just dropping the names that first come to mind).
As much as I clash with some of his professional/ethical decisions, Paul Stamets has contributed a ton to the accessibility of Mycology to the masses. Check out Mycelium Running and Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms as introductions to the Fifth Kingdom.
I'm also really enjoying Tradd Cotter's new book, Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation
Fungi for the People and The Radical Mycology Collective have also been hugely influential in my personal growth as an amateur mycologist. If you ever get a chance to attend any of their events, I would recommend doing it.
Best of luck and enjoy your journey!
Momentan citesc Growing Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms. :)
Inainte de ea am terminat 12 Rules for Life.
Urmatoarea probabil o sa fie Skin in the game.
> Bonus: Cartea preferata.
Nu prea mai am o carte preferata. Sunt mai multe aflate la nivelul maxim din varii motive si nu prea pot alege intre ele.
"The Gift" a lui Hafiz si "Felicity" a lui Mary Oliver sunt doua carti de poezie care mi-au placut enorm si pe care le pot recomanda fara ezitare. :)
Paul Stamets has several excellent books on the subject. Check out this one, for instance.
You did not trouble me at all, please keep researching because there is lots of good information on here and you may come a crossed and expert who could really help you more. I would recommend you order this book from your local library “ Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms” by Paul Stamets
Amazon link:
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580081754/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pNRIBbYJKPYP1
YouTube video: of Paul Stamets and Joe Rogan interview
https://youtu.be/mPqWstVnRjQ
Welcome!
I'm not sure what kind of mushrooms you are interested in, but I would say the simplest way of starting to grow gourmet mushrooms would be purchasing a pre-colonized mushroom kit. These are usually only a week or two from producing fruits and will minimize the chances that you will get contamination.
I haven't purchased from them, but something like Fungi Perfecti's indoor mushroom growing kits (link) would likely be a good starting point. This will give you an idea if you like the most straightforward parts of the hobby.
If you find that you enjoy that and find which mushrooms you want to grow more seriously, you can move on from there.
If you want to get more information, a lot of books by Paul Stamets are considered required reading, such as Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. There is a ton of information in these, but if you've already gotten an idea of what kind of mushrooms you like, you can find a ton of information about each mushroom in this. A lot of excerpts from this are also available on the shroomery.org pages for different mushroom growing parameters.
I hope that this is useful. Feel free to ask any questions! I'm definitely new around here, but it's definitely been a welcoming community.
Paul Stamets' (arguably the world's leading mycologist) "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms."
Also, check out his TED talk. Not much on growing, but cool stuff about mushrooms, nonetheless.
Grab a copy of this: http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Gourmet-Medicinal-Mushrooms-Stamets/dp/1580081754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324996206&sr=8-1 I received a copy for xmas, and it's close to encyclopedic.
Good tip on getting coffee grounds; I'll check w/ my local 'bucks.
I don't actually know a lot about it, I've grown a couple batches, and read Paul Stamets huge book on the matter. But Stamets is most focused on farm scale cultivation, only a bit on log culture. Basically, to make your own loaf type thing would require a cleanroom and autoclave, although you could make small ones in a pressure cooker. Oyster mushrooms are hardier, pouring boiling water over sawdust is good enough for them. Or you could drill holes in fresh logs and put inoculated sawdust inside. This is cheap, natural, and reliable, but in that scenario the fungus decides when to fruit.
Field and Forest has some good basic instructions, especially the links at the bottom of the page. Include a heavy duty corded drill in the budget for the project, green oak is tough.
I use Stamets Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms . What substrate are you using? How did you prepare it? What form of inoculation did you use?
you can pick them as soon as the veils start to break, they wont get any bigger. They will just open more and begin to start releasing spores. the reason is that they are most potent at this point (how much more potent is arguable). If you are not making spore prints, i would pick them as soon as the veil breaks, but it wont hurt anything to let them open. if this is your first grow I recommend letting a few open all the way just to see the process.
This book is highly recommended and help me through my first few grows: https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Gourmet-Medicinal-Mushrooms-Stamets/dp/1580081754
Be very careful using Reddit a resource for mushrooms, I have seen horrible information and really bad advise on here.
send me a message if you have any more questions.