Oysters on Cardboard/Paper

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ragadinks
MrBeatle

Registered: 10/20/03
Posts: 1,298
Last seen: 3 years, 8 days

Oysters on Cardboard/Paper

4
#3200510 - 09/30/04 05:23 PM (22 years, 18 days ago)

In Stamets GGMM and on his website I have read that you can grow oysters on a paper/cardboard substrate.
Since this is a very cheap raw material that is easy to obtain I thought that I could experiment with it a bit.
I have tried several methods that uses paper as a substrate but this was the cheapest, fastest and easiest I came across:

The substrate:

Since wet paper is a very dense substrate I use straw in order to aerate and loosen it:

Before I used the newspaper I made sure that there are no harmful substances in it by simply calling the guys who produce it and asking them.
The ink usually is made out of soy oil and carbon - nothing poisonous !

The growing container:

When making a growing container it is very important that the excess water can drain, CO2 can escape at the bottom and O2 can reach the substrate.
Therefore I used a big laundry basket in which I drilled some holes at the bottom:

The spawn:

For the beginning I used a strain of P.ostreatus and P.pulmonarius.
The spawn I used was either coffee ground or corn that is used to feed animals:

Preparing the substrate:

Preparing the substrate is very simple.
First you take a big enough rubbermaid container or something similar and fill about half of it with straw:

Then you add newspaper and cardboard till it is full:

After that you cover everything with very hot water (~60 degrees Celsius/~140 degrees Fahrenheit):

At the end I put a brick on top of it all, so that the straw does not start to float on top of the hot water:

This is a very simple method of substrate pasteurization but it works quite well.
Just make sure that all the ingredients are covered with hot water for at least 4 hours.
The water must be so hot that you cannot leave your fingers inside more that one or two seconds at the beginning.
The straw always tends to float on the surface and that is why I pack the paper cardboard very tight on top of it and weight it down with the brick.

Inoculation:

When the water has reached room temperature and you can start with inoculation.
After washing my hands I place the spawn (coffee grounds), the fruiting container and the prepared substrate in my bathing tube :wink:

First I take some newspaper and add a layer of it to the bottom of the laundry basket:

Then comes a layer of straw covered by a bit of spawn:

Repeat to add layers (~1 inch) of paper/cardboard, straw and spawn till the fruiting container is full or you have run out of the substrate/spawn:

Paper usually keeps water very well and it is hard work to get rid of it by squeezing the substrate.
The big advantages of this method is you can simply add the wet paper without caring about the water contents of the substrate.
Just pack the whole block tightly at the end and let it rest for half an our - the excess water will drain out at the bottom ...

Incubation:

When most of the excess water has drained I carry the container to the incubation room and place it on a lid of a rubbermaid container.
Since water will drain out of the substrate during the coming few days it is important that you put something underneath !
The laundry basket is covered with a big black garbage bag then:

As you can see on the picture I put the bag over the top of the container leaving the opening at the bottom.
This way the water can drain through the holes at the bottom and CO2 can escape easily.
If you enclose the substrate in a bag the water will stay in the bottom part of the substrate and the mycelium cannot colonize it there which often results in contamination.
Another thing I have noticed is that the substrate get's colonized very fast by the mycelium.
The reason for this might be the fact that the draining water also transports part of the mycelium to unspawned areas (kind of liquid inoculation ?).

The left container on the following picture shows mycelium of P.ostreatus and the right one P.pulmonarius.
It took both strains about 20 days till they had fully colonized the containers:

Pinning:

When the P. pulmonarius started to pin I put both container into an old glass house where the get better air exchange and more light:

P. ostreatus did not pin till the temperatures decreased (~10-20 degrees Celsius):

Fruiting:

P. pulmonarius grew very fast since the temperatues(20-30 degrees Celsius) were optimal for it at that time:

Here are two pics of it just before harvesting:

Now, since the temperatures have decreased Pleurotus ostreatus also does very well on that substrate as you can see here:

Harvest:

Here is a picture of the first havest of Pleurotus pulmonarius:

Conclusion:

The duration between spawning and first harvest of Pleurotus pulmonarius was less then 30 days. To me this seems quite fast.
It would be interesting to test out different strains and determine the productivity of each strain on this substrate (yield/substrate ratio).
Till now I have only tried out P. pulmonarius and P. ostreatus with this method on this substrate but I am quite sure that also Hypsizygus ulmarius,
Hypsizygus tesselatus and Pleurotus dmajor will do very well, since I have tried to grow them on paper using a more sterile method.

Think that this method has quite some advantages for the low-tech cultivator. Some of these are:

paper, cardboard and straw are easily obtainable
paper and cardboard do not cost anything
pasteurization is very simple and does not need extra equipment
sterility is not so important
some strains grow fast with this method
easy to get rid of excess water and reaching the proper moisture content of substrate

Extras:

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