|
Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
|
Sadegh
Stranger
Registered: 07/18/15
Posts: 10
Last seen: 8 years, 5 months
|
Absolute noob looking to start growing
#21960315 - 07/18/15 12:14 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
So I got in my head that I should start growing (gourmet) mushrooms somehow. Don't remember how it happened, probably had something to do with how you can only go so far with Arduino without having to get a soldering iron, and that doesn't replicate itself / isn't edible / doesn't necessarily make a good gift, so maybe mushrooms are a better hands-on science hobby. Whatever. The point is that I want to do it but am concerned about the various pitfalls that seem to befall a lot of growers.
My strategy is to start with baby steps. It seems that the easiest thing to grow to start with, from what I've read, is oyster mushrooms. Ease of growth is obviously an important consideration. A secondary consideration is taste. I've never really liked button mushrooms to be quite honest; they taste like nothing and they're all rubbery. Are oysters going to be a better bet, even if I have to prepare them a certain way? I've heard king oysters can be made to taste like bacon.
You're welcome to suggest any subtype of oyster or some other variety all together if it's easy to grow. Worse comes to worst, I can just give away / sell whatever I came up with if I don't like it.
Now, being as I'm starting with baby steps, it of course makes the most sense to start with a growing kit. There are a diverse array of suppliers out there. I don't know who's the best. Any opinions you have about suppliers are welcome.
Next, the growing environment. I plan to grow in the garage of the house. It's cool, dry (which I understand is good because you just want the moisture in the growing apparatus) and shady. I have no idea offhand how much potential contamination is in there. How much do I have to worry about with a pre-made growing kit, where the substrate is all colonized? And in the future, if I want to go more advanced? It's not clear just how sterile you realistically have to be. Some of the advice I've seen seems kind of paranoid (i.e. clean your entire house). I understand you can leave a few Petri dishes with agar out in the intended growing area and if they each only have a few colonies later on, you're good to go. To get a sense of what my standards are: if in the future I should lose a few dollars worth of culture to mold or something, that's not a big deal, at least not in the short term.
It seems like a compact fluorescent bulb is good enough to induce proper fruiting for my purposes.
So ... finally (almost), what are the next levels of difficulty, in order, up from kits that you just have to mist and generally just handle right? I mean not difficulty for its own sake, I mean to get more yield at a lower cost by doing your own labor and getting your own inputs. What is the next logical step after successful getting an kit of an easy variety to grow, and so forth?
And one last question for now (sorry): if you are doing PF-Tek, how much do you really need a pressure cooker versus putting the jar on the boil on the stovetop?
|
Gr0wer
always improving


Registered: 09/16/03
Posts: 6,056
Loc: El Paso, TX
Last seen: 5 years, 10 months
|
Re: Absolute noob looking to start growing [Re: Sadegh]
#21960785 - 07/18/15 02:16 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
I started off with a sawdust grow kit of blue oysters and GTG'd into WBS jars. Starting off i made my bathroom counter into a clean workspace and did still air work in open air. Plugs or a culture on agar or LC is also a good starting point. You will eventually want a still air box (SAB) or glovebox or if you have $$ make or buy a flowhood. All your sterile work will be GTG and syringe inoculation in the jars. Get a pressure cooker, a 17-21 qt presto is all you need for small scale home production to get started, enough for 7 quart jars. Two runs of my pressure cooker is enough spawn for 150-180lbs of bulk sub. Source a 40lb bag of millet/milo based bird seed, some sunflower and other seeds in the mix is ok. If you have a local feed or grain supply store milo is another option and much cleaner than WBS. Get a 40 lb bag of landscape gypsum and use it at 5% in all your substrates and jars, helps with colonization and breaking up clumps in seed jars. Once the jars are colonized you just need to be clean not sterile. A good digiscale is a good idea, I have a 8 kilo model with gram increments and it serves me well an ac adapter is also nice so you're not constantly replacing batteries. I primarily use it to weigh my dry grain and gypsum, also weighing harvests. Weighing your dry grain is a good idea so you only soak enough grain to fill the jars you need, no extra grain to throw out at the end. I weigh out ~260g for wbs and ~290g for milo per quart jar of spawn. Personally i do a hot water soak for 10-18 hours, rinse and no simmer with good results. I add gypsum after the rinse and mix it before loading the jars. A canning jar funnel is also a handy tool for filling jars.
You will need to make a bulk pasteurizer and pick out a bulk substrate. If your hot water heater can be set around 160-170f your golden. Just use your hot water to fill a drum and hot bath pasteurize in that at 140-150 core temp for 90min. Otherwise you need a electric hot water heating element or propane burner under a steel drum to hit proper temps. A 1500w 120v element with 12ga wires going to a standard 15a circuit is all you need if you go that route. Realize a turkey burner stand cant hold up the 3-400 lb drum if you go that route so you need to make a stand of bricks or cinder blocks to hold the drum. Straw is a common sub but you must chop it using shears, a leaf shredder, or a shredder vac. I'm currently using natural hardwood mulch and experimenting with mixes of mulch with 5-20% coco coir and 10-20% aged dried manure with good results.
If you looking to do a garage setup look around the forum at basement and garage grows. The easiest way is to to build a greenhouse inside your garage is using studs and poly sheet from a home improvement store. Things you want to consider is fresh air exchange (FAE), the air will need to be exchanged from outdoors to purge the co2 building up in the greenhouse and garage. You optimally would have a home filter screen on the air intake to filter out some outside spores but mainly keep out bugs. Oysters need a lot of almost constant FAE to not be lankey. You also want to exhaust the air to outside as there are mushroom spores around harvest time that aren't healthy to breathe in. You should be wearing a good particulate mask especially around harvest time when working inside the chamber.
Good luck and dont be afraid to PM me with any noob questions, we all were noobs at one time. Best advice is read around the forums and search query for research, read, read, read! Cut and paste good info to a word doc for reference as it tends to be spread out.
my oyster grow, still getting the ball rolling goal of 8-12 lbs per week. http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/21759449
primo FAE setup on this grow http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/21892073/gonew/1#UNREAD
|
skycaptain



Registered: 11/13/09
Posts: 22
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
|
Re: Absolute noob looking to start growing [Re: Sadegh]
#21960886 - 07/18/15 02:51 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Good luck to you on your endeavors. I'm pretty new myself. I have successfully did a few blue oyster blocks in a homade greenhouse in my house. When I found out about the spores being bad for you I halted everything. I am now getting ready for some outdoor logs. I will someday again do blocks indoors. But not until I'm a bit more educated.
I've read so, so much here. And plan on reading a lot more. A little tip is to look up abbreviations as they come up in sentence. It'll Help understand it all.
|
knomadic_niki
A mile high



Registered: 06/30/14
Posts: 1,275
Loc: 6200' Colorado
Last seen: 6 years, 5 months
|
Re: Absolute noob looking to start growing [Re: skycaptain]
#21961252 - 07/18/15 04:25 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
if you have a facebook account, look for the mycology classifieds page. leighton banks and a few others sell kits all the time and they're very reasonably priced and quality stuff. kits are a great way to start. getting used to the environment the fruits prefer is the first step. you'll need some kind of humid environment that also has air flow, like a tote or a plastic tent with holes in them. mushrooms are finicky. but its a very rewarding hobby. oysters are delicious in my opinion. fry them up in butter and garlic, add them to any dish. by the way, you want to cook all your mushrooms. undercooking or eating them raw causes indigestion. good luck!
-------------------- My trade list In search of sporeless oyster cultures
|
Sadegh
Stranger
Registered: 07/18/15
Posts: 10
Last seen: 8 years, 5 months
|
Re: Absolute noob looking to start growing [Re: Sadegh]
#21964545 - 07/19/15 11:30 AM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Wow, this was an immensely useful set of responses! I have ordered away for a pre-made king oyster growing kit and will probably return if I have any problems, though I don't expect any in the first stage of the game.
|
Gr0wer
always improving


Registered: 09/16/03
Posts: 6,056
Loc: El Paso, TX
Last seen: 5 years, 10 months
|
Re: Absolute noob looking to start growing [Re: Sadegh]
#21968041 - 07/19/15 11:13 PM (8 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Kings don't need as much FAE when compared to other oysters indoors. Good choice for indoor cultivation.
|
|