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junk_f00d



Registered: 12/04/15
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Ferather]
#26339737 - 11/23/19 09:34 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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What sort of yield potential exist for a 144 sq. ft space? (1094 cubic ft)? I know, I know, "time will tell", or whatever - I'm just trying to rerun the numbers on this fine morning. I saw video where Gr0wer said he gets 100lbs per week from one of those grow shelves, and I imagine I can stuff 4 of those in my little space.. But 400lb/week seems quite unrealistic for a ~10x14 space.
Also, I don't really understand what eats up the margins in commercial mushroom businesses, other than employees and loans (mostly to pay off equipment, land, etc). I have neither, and my input costs are limited to (AFAIK) bails of straw, grains, utilities, petri dishes (slants, etc) and soon I'll nab some disposable substrate bags and delivery boxes, along with paying a little bit extra gas monthly, but all of these are so cheap it almost seems inconsequential. I believe I'm misunderstanding something, but I'm not sure. Everything always looks better on paper.
Edited by junk_f00d (11/23/19 09:49 AM)
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Solipsis
m̶a̶d̶ disappointed scientist



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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: junk_f00d]
#26347878 - 11/27/19 04:42 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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How do you value your labor?  Also, easy forget all the prerequisite little steps but that really depends on your situation - not everybody needs advertisement or a lot of time spent on managing clients like restaurants or whatever your outlet is.
Surely there is a reason why many mushroom farms seem to stop making their own spawn? I guess whether its worth running a lab for it yourself etc very much depends on the situation and the scale of everything. Imagine having to put a worker on that and what it would cost.
But if you can do everything yourself yeah that saves a ton on overhead and on a small scale can be manageable and feels less complicated than having a parttime guy do one of the steps or something. I guess that's when you start up - when you expend i guess some of those parts stop being practical.
At least that is what i figure. I'm still starting up myself too.. however im not really going to be a mushroom producer per se. The culturing work is a vital part for me cause it is meant to become an end in itself and not just a means to mushroom sales. Also im in kind of a luxury position of disability - complicated story - and i'm working on filling niches involving mushrooms and other fungi.
Edited by Solipsis (11/27/19 04:56 AM)
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Fergent
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Solipsis]
#26347881 - 11/27/19 04:43 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Solipsis said: How do you value your labor? 
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junk_f00d



Registered: 12/04/15
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Fergent]
#26348676 - 11/27/19 01:52 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Yeah, it occured to me after posting that I was excluding (my) labor costs. For a one man operation, or for the "owner" of the business, it seemed like an odd thing to do, since the entire net gain is essentially my pay, so substracting my "hourly rate" seemed arbitrary. But I imagine for farms that scale up to having employees, this must be an essential step in the accounting to ensure the owner can still pay their bills.
What was tripping me up was reading or hearing about other mushroom biz margins, which were often below 40% (even with equipment paid off), and it had me thinking I was massively miscalculating. But in these estimates, I now asusme they've factored in their labor cost / bills already (and who knows how generous they are to themselves).. I was struggling to see how small farms only had a 40% margin when they're [gross oversimplification warning] turning something that's ~$50 per ton (straw) into something that's ~$10/lb (oysters). I've read even RR complain about the paper-thin margins in the shiitake business and I struggle to see how that can be so at his scale.
I just wanted to make sure I'm getting all this as I continue to invest in myself, I never actually did double check my numbers with anyone who knows their stuff, but I've checked them dozens of times myself and there seems to be a big mistmatch between my numbers and what others report, which raises some concern. Anyway, sorry for the rant, just want to clear this up.. And any estimates on the max weekly potential production in 144 sq ft / 1094 cubic ft would be cool. I've been using 200lb as my figure, which may be slightly optimistic even with top knotch cultivating and substrate nutrition.
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DutchMyco
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: junk_f00d]
#26349236 - 11/27/19 06:10 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Also don't expect to sell at $10/lb if you grow larger amounts, if you can sell them at all. And imagine the time it takes at farmers markets to sell some at that price. In some places it might work, in other places it makes more financial sense to spend that time at a minimum wage job.
Also include incubation space.
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junk_f00d



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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: DutchMyco]
#26349302 - 11/27/19 06:36 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Yeah, $10 was just for simple figuring to highlight the huge difference between input and output prices ($50/ton of straw vs $10/lb of oysters), I base my personal calculations on $6/lb (as per the shitload calculation: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/14069753#14069753), though, for my area, that is a bit low (the other farms I know of charge anywhere from $8 (for wholesale) to $16). I'm hoping to produce and sell enough to reach the shitload calc numbers, so hopefully my sq footage allows for that. My incubation space is about the same (in terms of sq footage) as the fruiting space, but the sterile room is tiny, maybe 50 sq feet, but I don't think a tight lab space will impact production much.
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TedsDead



Registered: 01/03/17
Posts: 4,998
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: junk_f00d]
#26349650 - 11/27/19 10:24 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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anyone have experience/ knowledge on calocybe indica? I recently received several cultures from a vendor and only the calocybe indica explicitly stated not to refrigerate. no slanting and cold storage for this species then or is this misinformation? thanks!
-------------------- weed gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no weed... -the fabulous furry freak bros If you can buy it, you can burn it!
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25947396#25947396
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Solipsis
m̶a̶d̶ disappointed scientist



Registered: 12/28/09
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: TedsDead]
#26351420 - 11/29/19 03:47 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Your hourly rate or the price you need to charge for your mushrooms can still be calculated based on your personal expenses, your rent and what income you desire to have for a little saving or reinvesting or whatever. So it's not arbitrary because that is effectively what gets paid as well with the salary for a worker.
But yeah you're right the materials tend to be pretty damn cheap. Some labor can be pretty intensive though. So naturally it should be a top priority to increase your efficiency by automating things more. Buying or building tools or jigs to make the work doable and the manual labor doesn't escalate.
If you have quite a bit of space, do you have a lot automated already or do you recognize that you have a lot of material to handle? Am curious  personally im not really operational yet, gotta complete a steam barrel and the bagging room etc.
A tight lab well you should have less work there if you only really grow one or two species, but it's different if you focus on a species bank like me haha.
@TedsDead:
Calocybe indica is tropical so it is assumed you cannot refrigerate it but you totally can. I did for a little while and it was alright when i took it out. I'm just not sure that for the long term it will still be a vigorous culture. And i would absolutely be careful with freezing temps.
Maybe the best for it is like 10(-12) ®C / 50 ®F what would be warm for a fridge but cold for a tropical species. At least i didnt stick mine in my colder fridge.
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Dephect




Registered: 08/10/07
Posts: 1,779
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Solipsis]
#26351903 - 11/29/19 12:19 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Does this look okay to you guys? I have had a Pearl Oyster LC for a while and decided to inoculate some spawn.
This is what it looks like currently, I feel like its off and could be cobweb, but I might just be paranoid. I don't remember it looking like this the last time I made some spawn.


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TedsDead



Registered: 01/03/17
Posts: 4,998
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Dephect]
#26351915 - 11/29/19 12:30 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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that looks, great! time for a shake. oyster myc can be a bit whispy like that. your grain prep looks op tho
wtf, are those purple blue, green streaks reflecting on ur jars? looks cool!
-------------------- weed gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no weed... -the fabulous furry freak bros If you can buy it, you can burn it!
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25947396#25947396
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Dephect




Registered: 08/10/07
Posts: 1,779
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: TedsDead]
#26351975 - 11/29/19 12:55 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I definitely shook them right after I took those shots. Thanks, I have made rye so many times that its second nature now. I just bought some Red Wheat Berries though and trying that out with this cube strain I have been growing. They are basically interchangeable with the same recipe.
Thanks for the reaffirmations. Its been a while and I have had these just sitting on my shelf growing crazy layers of myc in the LC.
The lights streaking on my jar are the two RGB LED strips I have mounted to the ceiling in my office/lab. They are on a slow morph setting.
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Greg
always learning




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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Dephect]
#26353837 - 11/30/19 01:03 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Thanks to the generosity of this community as well as the great vendor Out Grow I now have 10 different gourmet cultures on agar.

I was eventually able to clean up that contaminated blue oyster LC I was working with, so I actually have two different columbinus cultures now.
Going to let these plates grow out then do a big agar wedge giveaway in the marketplace...
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Puduwoke
mushroom enthusiastic

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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Greg]
#26353866 - 11/30/19 01:18 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I Will be om that!
Thanks you for sharing! 
Which cultures you got there mate?
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Trade List LAGM2021
Edited by Puduwoke (11/30/19 01:18 PM)
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Greg
always learning




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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Puduwoke]
#26353903 - 11/30/19 01:31 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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For oysters I have:
- Lung - P. pulmonarius
- King - P. eryngii
- Blue - P. columbinus (2 strains)
- Pearl - P. ostreatus
- Yellow - P. sajor-caju
- Yellow - P. citrinopileatus
- Funciu di basilicu - P. nebrodensis
Other cultures:
- Black Reishi - Ganoderma sinense
- Shaggy Mane - Coprinus comatus
- Olive Oysterling - Panellus serotinus
I assume all will recover fine, but time will tell.
I plan to prep a bunch of microcentrifuge tubes like so:

Edited by Greg (11/30/19 02:29 PM)
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Dephect




Registered: 08/10/07
Posts: 1,779
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Greg]
#26355190 - 12/01/19 09:09 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Is it crazy that 1 day and 20hrs after a shake, my Pearl Oyster is looking 100% colonized. Oysters don't fuck around.
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junk_f00d



Registered: 12/04/15
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Solipsis]
#26355620 - 12/01/19 01:52 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
do you have a lot automated already or do you recognize that you have a lot of material to handle?
I do realize it's a lot of material to handle, and this is the only part I'm really kind of nervous about. I'll be dumping money into automating as soon as I can, but to get things off the ground I will be doing a lot of manual labor while reading up on cheap teks to help me out. My flow for bulk sub is currently cold pastuerization via a plastic food grade 55 gallon drum and caustic lime. I use a weedwhacker to chop the straw up, in a different barrel. I don't have a bagger, either, and will just be using quart jars, a still air box, and generic plastic bags from Uline (I already have tons of them sitting around and they've been working OK as fruiting bags, but obviously far from ideal and they're quite ugly really, lol - I wouldn't use them if they weren't essentially free and already on-hand). I do plan on transitioning to bags and flow hood as soon as possible, but want to finish the construction related projects first.
I'm starting VERY small scale, but with the space for slightly larger scale, and will just be doing flash sales via facebook and such until I can reliably produce at scale for restaurants. It should give me a good feel for what my production flow is going to look like, and allow room for error since I won't have chefs depending on regular weekly deliveries, but instead will just sell what I have, when I have it. When it's all up and running I plan on giving everyone here at Shroomery a full tour of my place and workflow so we can collectively tear it apart and help me get more efficient and better (the barebones model and layout should be done in a couple weeks, when I plan on having my first couple sales from the new room).
Quote:
it's different if you focus on a species bank like me haha.
How so? Curious. I have a dedicated fridge I can fit some species, and my incubation area is pretty large (it's outside the lab, of course). I'm really hoping the small lab doesn't run into problems, basically all it's going to be used for is the flow hood table and supplies, so I hope it will work for my commercial grows AND hobby grows. I do have several other species banked, but they aren't really in "production", and I haven't really had a problem yet.
Edited by junk_f00d (12/01/19 01:57 PM)
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Mycellenium
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: junk_f00d]
#26356610 - 12/02/19 03:24 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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 Is it tarragon oyster or am I growing mold? It colonizes so fast. Thanks guys!
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Ferather
Mycological



Registered: 03/19/15
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Mycellenium]
#26356706 - 12/02/19 05:52 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Dephect said: Is it crazy that 1 day and 20hrs after a shake, my Pearl Oyster is looking 100% colonized. Oysters don't fuck around.
Oyster's can be very vigorous (strong, healthy, and full of energy), My record response was around 8 hours, with a lot of growth after 12 hours. Here I put summer oyster spawn to, WL-Tek (enriched paper pellets) + 10% black tea leaves, with rapid response (12, 18 hours).


Even mycelial debris, from mixing the spawn, grew out. Visible draining (white-rot).
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Quote:
Mycellenium said:
 Is it tarragon oyster or am I growing mold? It colonizes so fast. Thanks guys!
Tarragon and Golden oyster can produce weak growth to start with, then thicken up later. There could also be other reasons, such as yeast or other, but looks ok.
Grains and high starch content is in-vitro (not normal) for lignicolous (wood loving) mycelium, which decay cellulose and phenols. Sometimes it takes a few shakes or transfers before better growth is observed (genetics, enzymes, so on).
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Edit: Re-ordered images.
Edited by Ferather (12/02/19 06:38 AM)
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Ferather
Mycological



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Posts: 6,325
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Ferather]
#26356729 - 12/02/19 06:14 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Tarragon oyster to experimental T-Gel + trace flour (with leaf):
Decided to leave the plate for a while, now it's started to dry out and shrink, however it's trying to fruit. In addition, when I removed the outer container, there was-is a potent smell of Tarragon.
The scent is slightly sweet, and very perfume like (almost like sweets).

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The Tarragon oyster did not produce the aromatic scent until it was more matured (4 weeks, in this case).
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Pleurotus ostreatus var. euosmus | Pleurotus cornucopiae var. euosmus
"Our data have raised some doubt on the species status of the commercial strain H14 P. cornucopiae from our collection, which fell into the subcluster P. cornucopiae on the phylogram. However, when compared with the pool of ITS sequences in GenBank, the ITS sequence of the H14 strain showed 99% similarity with the EU424298 sequence of Pleurotus euosmus (strain CBS 307.29). Further analysis of sequences pool in GenBank showed that P. euosmus species was presented by a single strain deposited in the Dutch Fungal Biodiversity Center, CBS. Moreover, this species was described in Great Britain as early as 1893 in the book British FungusFlora, under the name Agaricus (Pleurotus) euosmus [24]. Since the exact origin of cultured strain H14 in our collection is not determined, it is logical to assume that this strain could be a representative of the P. euosmus species. Since P. cornucopiae clade in general is quite heterogeneous, we conducted crosses between haploid testers of different P. cornucopiae strains (both commercial and wild) to identify potential reproductive barriers between them."
Phylogenetic Analysis of Pleurotus Species
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"Pleurotus cornucopiae is a species of edible fungus in the genus Pleurotus, It is quite similar to the better-known Pleurotus ostreatus, and like that species is cultivated and sold in markets in Europe and China, but it is distinguished because its gills are very decurrent, forming a network on the stem."
"The species name means "of the Cornucopia" (Horn of Plenty), which is appropriate since the mushrooms are edible and sometimes take on a shape similar to a drinking horn."
Pleurotus cornucopiae
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"Pleurotus cornocopiae, the Branched Oyster Mushroom, occurs throughout Britain and Ireland, where it is a fairly common sight, as well as in most parts of mainland Europe; its range extends also into western Asia. In eastern Asia the closely-related Golden Oyster Mushroom Pleurotus citrinopileatus is a very popular edible mushroom."
Pleurotus cornucopiae
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Notes: Decurrent gills, trumpet (horn) cap. Linalool, Coumarin (Tarragon).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00500836
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Ferather
Mycological



Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
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Re: The Gourmet Cultivation Discussion Thread [Re: Ferather]
#26356763 - 12/02/19 06:57 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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