Phaethon said:

For all the gourmet species that are commonly cultivated, grain spawn works great. Same process as for cubensis.

For shiitake, you need to incubate the bags for an extra 2-3 months, waiting for them to turn brown. Then put the bags in a cool garage overnight (or for a few nights), and then strip the bags and hose them off (I use a sink with a sprayer attachment). A few firm smacks at this stage can also encourage fruiting. Put them in a fruiting chamber, on a wire rack or elevated off the floor a bit. A monotub with big holes mostly covered by micropore tape, or with small EZ dial holes, works fine. I put two blocks per 66 qt tub. You'll need to use scissors or a knife to harvest (usually ready within a week in my experience).

Plug spawn is usually for growing directly on whole logs rather than in bags of sawdust (or fuel pellets).

Lion's mane and oysters want similar fruiting conditions - lots of fresh air and high humidity. Both want to grow on wood - not sure what you mean about modifying the lion's mane grow for a wood lover.

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Thank you.

I forgot oysters are wood lovers. Most of my time spent in this hobby the last few years has been cubes

I’m shocked to hear that an EZ dial Mono will work to fruit a block of shiitake but that is music to my ears!

I have run across a few old teks but I am worried about trusting anything because (at least for cubensis) there is the well-known problem of outdated teks. Not sure if gourmet protocols have changed as much in the last 20 years as cubensis methods.

Kloakk said:

spasm666 said:

Yes it's fruiting already. The plan is good. Just do it soon as your bags are already fruiting. Personally I would take all that visible growth inside the bag off and wait for new primordia, as it's already grown that much that it affects the outcome. But you can also slit the bag from where the growth is and continue those fruits, might get a bit deformed fruits though.

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Crap, okay, so if I where to remove them, do I just put my hand inside the bag? Don't have a flow hood and my SAB is not high enough so would be doing it in open air. Thanks.

Edit: Yeah.... There where no chance of removing the growth and it was to many of them to make slits all over. What I did was  fold the bags and tape them and made slits where I want them to pin. At this point I am trying to see if I can get fruits so my FC is JCM's watertub without a heater and it's at 80% humidity. It's far from ideal, but it is what it is I guess





Another question, the 2 other bags I have also have(really small) primordia, but they are not 100% colonized, what do I do?

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spasm666 said:

Don't worry too much about the invitro pinning, they'll soon find out they have no space or oxygen to grow and will stall there under the plastic. And new pins will emerge from your slits.

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spasm666 said:

If you ever need to remove unwanted growth you can do it with your hand through the plastic, just rub/pull/scrape them from outside through the plastic so that they come off from the substrate, and you can leave them inside the bag. If that can't be done just leave them be, it's just a small % of yield loss.

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spasm666 said:

Is there any sort of ventilation in your tub? Tubs are generally not good for oysters, but if you don't have any Fresh Air Exchange in that tub it's way worse than not good. You need to exchange the air in the tub many times every hour. Without FAE you will only grow weird looking stems with no caps. If there's any way you can maintain high humidity levels outside the tub, take them out for better results.

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There are 2 big airstones at the bottom of the tub(in water), air is coming from a 2 outlet airpump that pushes 480L(510 quarts) of air every hour and there is about 2cm(0,6inch) opening between the tub and lid so some FAE must be happening right? I will keep an eye on it tho and if I see that they are looking thin and weird I'll try changing setup.. I know even mentioning youtube is like cursing in the church around here, but I saw a video from "Renegade Mushroom" where he is fruiting a blue oyster block in a tub laying on it's side and just misting it with okay results, I was kinda hoping that the JCM setup could do the same, at least  this one time so I could see if oysters is for me.

spasm666 said:

Those two bags I'd incubate until ready, but if they get heavy with pins (or you've already incubated them for very long and they don't seem to colonize more) put into fruiting

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Will do, I did a test this first run of oyster bags and added a little different amount of water as I'm trying to dial in water/hwfp ratio with the one kind of hwfp I can get where I live, and both these bags was the bags that got the lowest amount of water. Might be too dry.. But they are also just 11 days in, I'll keep an eye on them.

And thank you so much, really appreciate it and learned a lot.

Kloakk said:

spasm666 said:

Don't worry too much about the invitro pinning, they'll soon find out they have no space or oxygen to grow and will stall there under the plastic. And new pins will emerge from your slits.

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This is great news, I was thinking they might keep on trying and use a lot of energy doing so.

spasm666 said:

If you ever need to remove unwanted growth you can do it with your hand through the plastic, just rub/pull/scrape them from outside through the plastic so that they come off from the substrate, and you can leave them inside the bag. If that can't be done just leave them be, it's just a small % of yield loss.

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That's neat, I would have guessed that whatever I did scrape off would rot in the bottom of the bag, that is why I ended up just leaving them as is, and as this is my first grow of any mushrooms, I am not concerned about yield at this point, just want a couple of fruits so that me and my wife can find out if this is a mushroom we like enough to grow it ourselves(can't buy it where we live).

spasm666 said:

Is there any sort of ventilation in your tub? Tubs are generally not good for oysters, but if you don't have any Fresh Air Exchange in that tub it's way worse than not good. You need to exchange the air in the tub many times every hour. Without FAE you will only grow weird looking stems with no caps. If there's any way you can maintain high humidity levels outside the tub, take them out for better results.

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There are 2 big airstones at the bottom of the tub(in water), air is coming from a 2 outlet airpump that pushes 480L(510 quarts) of air every hour and there is about 2cm(0,6inch) opening between the tub and lid so some FAE must be happening right? I will keep an eye on it tho and if I see that they are looking thin and weird I'll try changing setup.. I know even mentioning youtube is like cursing in the church around here, but I saw a video from "Renegade Mushroom" where he is fruiting a blue oyster block in a tub laying on it's side and just misting it with okay results, I was kinda hoping that the JCM setup could do the same, at least  this one time so I could see if oysters is for me.

spasm666 said:

Those two bags I'd incubate until ready, but if they get heavy with pins (or you've already incubated them for very long and they don't seem to colonize more) put into fruiting

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Will do, I did a test this first run of oyster bags and added a little different amount of water as I'm trying to dial in water/hwfp ratio with the one kind of hwfp I can get where I live, and both these bags was the bags that got the lowest amount of water. Might be too dry.. But they are also just 11 days in, I'll keep an eye on them.

And thank you so much, really appreciate it and learned a lot.

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The aborted pins will grow some more and use a bit energy but still quite a little, you will have enough yield for your goal.

Good that you have active fae in the tub, then it will be ok. Not ideal but will also work good enough for your goal. Remember though that the stems aren't as tender and soft as the caps, and you can always improve your fae to achieve shorter stems and more cap to enjoy it more.

I don't think Youtube is a curse word here. There is a lot of good information out there from reputable commercial growers (surely there is bad advice too).

Let us know how it turned out

spasm666 said:

The aborted pins will grow some more and use a bit energy but still quite a little, you will have enough yield for your goal.

Good that you have active fae in the tub, then it will be ok. Not ideal but will also work good enough for your goal. Remember though that the stems aren't as tender and soft as the caps, and you can always improve your fae to achieve shorter stems and more cap to enjoy it more.

I don't think Youtube is a curse word here. There is a lot of good information out there from reputable commercial growers (surely there is bad advice too).

Let us know how it turned out

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Sounds good, thank you. And yeah I know it's not ideal at this point, but as long as I can get okay results this try run, cook and taste them then I could make a more educated decision about buying and setting up a martha tent.

This is only 30 hours after making a slit.

Kloakk said:

I messed up

I had the lid resting on the tote latches, some time during the night the lid fell down and closed the tote. Result is this.


My question is, will it recover? If not, do I just remove the cluster, tape the slit, and make another one in a different place on the bag? I have 3 other bags and really not concerned, just want one healthy cluster of shrooms to figure out if I like oyster mushrooms and if I do, well then I will get a better setup.

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bambus said:

Kloakk said:

I messed up

I had the lid resting on the tote latches, some time during the night the lid fell down and closed the tote. Result is this.


My question is, will it recover? If not, do I just remove the cluster, tape the slit, and make another one in a different place on the bag? I have 3 other bags and really not concerned, just want one healthy cluster of shrooms to figure out if I like oyster mushrooms and if I do, well then I will get a better setup.

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They just needed some more FAE. That cluster won't grow more, so go ahead and pick them, plenty there for a taste test. Just make some slits where the new primordia begin to form, and aim for more fresh air. Oysters need more FAE than most any other mushroom.

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Will do, thank you

Phaethon said:

Lion's mane, oysters, and most other cultivated gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are wood decomposers. You can try with just grass seed, but I wouldn't expect good results.

Bottle cultivation is not complicated - lots about it available with a simple Google search. See e.g. this article. You make a supplemented wood substrate (e.g. 80:20 fuel pellets:bran by weight, with 60% hydration), load it into jars or PP containers, bore ~1-inch holes in each to accept spawn, sterilize, cool, and inoculate in aseptic conditions (SAB or laminar sterile flow). Fruit in a tent or open air or tub depending on the species (you'll probably want open air or a humidified and ventilated tent with lion's mane and most oysters, which want high humidity and high FAE, far more than P. cubensis).

You can try substituting grass seed for bran for the supplementation. It may have a different C:N ratio than is ideal, but if it's basically free, it's worth a try.

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deadmandave said:

Looking great. What's your pinning strategy?

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the man said:

no he meant conditions..

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