Sulfurshelfsean said:

I'm in a camper, atm. If I can do it I think you can. Basically the same thing.

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tree frog said:

hiredgoons said:

Some of these companies do seem to care about their reputations. One in particular that I've found has glowing reviews. The vast majority report no problems and a few report that they had problems but the company made it right. They use millet and milo grains rather than the usual rye.

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I have a friend that works for a well known gourmet mushroom vendor that also sells bins for boomers.  They also have glowing reviews.  And hearing his stoires around quality control and the misleading advice given by customer support, I assume they game their reviews somehow (removing negative ones from their website, curating a reddit sub where they can also remove negative reviews, etc.)

At the end of the day they're selling shovels.  And if their shovel doesn't work well, they'll gaslight the miner.  And if the miner is digging for illegal gold, they probably won't be inclined to leave a negative review when someone has their address and credit card info.

I'm not saying all vendors are like this.  And millet and milo suggests it's a different vendor.  But...  this is a larger vendor with glowing reviews and reputation, and neither the reviews or the reputation are deserved.

I would suggest PF Tek as others have already.

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hiredgoons said:

It's similar. I sometimes get ideas from van life types about heating and things like that. But there are some differences. Butane is much more dangerous on a boat because it's heavier than air so can pool in the hull. So I have to be really careful. And the air isn't as damp in vans.

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Quote:

My camper has fold out tents and I've had to keep them open thebwhole winter. Fighting the air currents has been interesting. They use butane on boats?

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tree frog said:

An InstaPot is good for small projects.

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27090797/fpart/1/vc/1

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B Traven said:

Kind of replying cold here, i.e., what I'm about to say isn't necessarily taking into account the past couple pages of discussion.

The biggest thing that stands out to me with the limitations of a living situation like this is how much of a bigger deal it would be to have projects fail completely. If I end up tossing 20 quarts of spawn, it sucks. But I didn't expend a bunch of super scarce resources to make those 20 quarts. I just fire everything up again and give it another go. With a limited run in a restricted environment, you REALLY want to get it right if you can.

Kits and pre-sterilized materials just don't seem like the way forward in such a situation. You also may end up being interested in smaller-scale containers, just to hedge your bets and work within your space constraints.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can sterilize stuff and then keep it for quite some time before use. I personally am not a huge fan of that approach, but lots of people here do things that way. Can you do some rough camping somewhere for a few days? That would give you an opportunity to set up a wood-fueled rocket stove and run a pressure cooker on it. Get your plates, jars, PF jars, whatever, all situated in an environment where fuel is abundant and condensation isn't an issue. Then just being it all back to the boat and proceed in normal fashion. That's probably what I'd be trying to do in your situation.

I might be a heretic or an outlier, butvI don't really have much of an issue with cold-temperature growing. I don't think it's anywhere near as big a deal as people make it out to be. I'd probably try to go with smaller harvests throughout the year, and dialing in a small-scale system, over shooting the moon and then trying to get everything preserved in honey. Drying reuqires a decent amount of heat and/or electricity, and living in an environment where dampness is already a concern will kust exacerbate that. And I wouldn't recommend trying to preserve fresh mushrooms in honey. Tea is an option, but that would typically involve both boiling water and preserving it in the freezer. Dealing with your harvest actually might be your biggest hurdle, but distributing it throughout the year would at least make things more manageable.

I'm even inclined to go so far as to suggest tiny pp5 containers for fruiting. If you want to screw around with agar, why not work on cultures that'll pin super readily? Get a flow going where you always have a few tiny grain vessels- maybe topped off with coir, or maybe not- and you just pick and eat pins? You can still let them get bigger, but pins pack quite the punch for their size. And that way, you've got a wider window of opportunity to pick and eat fresh material, especially if you're growing in colder conditions. With a little tinkering and timing, you could get it to the point where there's always fresh material to eat, and minimal work to do to keep it all going. Keeping everything small like that, and spreading the work out over time, also makes something like running a small instapot more feasible. Assuming it's doable with your electricity constraints, which I don't pretend to have an understanding of.

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hiredgoons said:

I have a plan for getting them properly dry. I use these disposable dehumidifiers to try to keep the dampness under control. They work reasonably well. So what I'll do is put the shrooms in a sealed container with some dehumidifiers. That should pull the moisture out of them quite well I think.

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hiredgoons said:

One of the kits I inoculated with z strain has taken off with blue green. I had a heart attack when I saw it. "Omg contamination". I googled about green grow kit contamination and read about Trichoderma and almost threw it away. Luckily I read more and realised it's probably just blue mycelium. So I mixed it. Hopefully it is just blue mycelium. It's strange how that kit has taken off while the other shows no sign at all. I guess for some reason that one must have got warmer. Or maybe I didn't shake the syringe enough so one kit got more spores than the other.

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LyleChipperson said:

hiredgoons said:

I have a plan for getting them properly dry. I use these disposable dehumidifiers to try to keep the dampness under control. They work reasonably well. So what I'll do is put the shrooms in a sealed container with some dehumidifiers. That should pull the moisture out of them quite well I think.

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That's not going to work for you. For long term storage they need to be completely bone dry, and for that you need a dehydrator. Check out how they can feel dry but still hold a lot of moisture inside here.

It's not worth it to go through the whole process and then ruin your fruits in just 1-2 months because you didn't dehydrate them properly.

hiredgoons said:

One of the kits I inoculated with z strain has taken off with blue green. I had a heart attack when I saw it. "Omg contamination". I googled about green grow kit contamination and read about Trichoderma and almost threw it away. Luckily I read more and realised it's probably just blue mycelium. So I mixed it. Hopefully it is just blue mycelium. It's strange how that kit has taken off while the other shows no sign at all. I guess for some reason that one must have got warmer. Or maybe I didn't shake the syringe enough so one kit got more spores than the other.

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That sounds like mold, I wouldn't count on it being blue mycelium. Do you have any photos, how quickly did it happen after inoculation, and what do you mean you mixed it? Posting photos as you go along would be best because it's not really possible to get accurate advice otherwise.

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I'll take a photo when it grows back. You can't see it so well now as it's mixed in. In the type of kit I have you're supposed to mix it all together once the grain is colonised.

Every thread on here I've seen with a situation that looks like mine started with "omg look at this Trichoderma" and then was full of people saying "na that's blue mycelium".

Here for example:

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27402239

Bruising is probably to be expected in this setting because there's a lot of movement. It will have been hitting the sides of the box whenever there's waves.

As for the drying, Grok 4.20 expert mode thinks it will work so it has to be at least worth a try.

B Traven said:

Using desiccant used to be a very common method of drying. I'm pretty sure most of the shrooms I got back in the day were dried that way. And I'm sure people still do it. That's why AI programs will tell you to go ahead with it.

Having stomach problems after eating mushrooms was also very common. I just thought it was a normal part of the experience.

But it was part of a whole set of practices, including bagging shrooms up in sandwich baggies. And nobody with any sense thought that they'd keep very well for very long that way, regardless of whether we understood the concept of case drying or not.

Since your starting premise is that you want to grow a bunch and then store them for long-term use, this is especially ill-advised. If you do choose to ignore our warnings and proceed with this plan, at least shred your harvests to increase surface area. And maybe consider only using them for tea, so you're not eating half-rotten fruits 6 months in.

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LadysKnight said:

In the beginning, I used to dry my fruits the way you describe. It works, for a few weeks. But it doesn't lock in potency or edibility. Both will continue to degrade.

Two options with storage. Completely dry (not kinda) or completely frozen (tea).

It takes more electricity to dry than freeze. My standard fridge/freezer uses about 600wh/day. I would make tea from a beach fire, store in freezer.

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LadysKnight said:

With 12v solar, you can run a 12v freezer, or 120v with an inverter. 2-600watthours

Or an electric dehydrator for 24hrs for 8-14,000watthours

There are also solar dehydrators you can build.

Either way, a joy of life is figuring out how to operate within one's environment.
Enjoy the process!

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