Ok -
For a while now, I've been buying this mushroom:
The "Bluefoot", AKA Lepista saeva or Clitocybe saeva, cousin to Lepista nuda, the "Blewit", a wild mushroom popular & plentiful (apparently) in Scotland, but common here as well.
The bluefoot is supposedly a "cultivated" blewit, meaning that it is grown indoors, since the blewit can be cultivated in beds on compost, like Agaricus.
Here's a photo of the blewit:
And something I found on the web about blewit cultivation:
Cultivation tips
This species grows very happily around compost heaps and amonst woody leaf litter. Once established, the outdoor beds require little maintainance and should fruit every year.? Crops have been harvested from Late September, well into winter, even after light frosts. Indoor cultivation is possible too and beds should be prepared using the same methods used for Agaricus farming.? The best casing mixture is peat with plenty of limestone flour.
Stamets has a chapter in TMC about L. nuda, but I get the sense he hadn't worked with it himself when he wrote it, since the details are sketchy, and only referential. And he left it out of GGMM as well, not thinking it worth including for some reason. These references might be worth looking at for this Lepista.
The bluefoot is a delicious edible, meaty and firm, medium sized, stands up well to grilling, and around $18/lb, so growing one's own would be a good thing.
Anyone else know this one, or know how to grow it?
A delectable mystery,
Armedia
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I couldn't tell you how to grow it, but I just found one myself on a walk today. I'm collecting some spores at the moment, and I just ordered some agar. Going to just try it and see how it goes.
Update: I cultivated a spore print on five agar plates. I had contamination in 1 because I dropped it on the floor one day while checking on the growth. Took a few weeks for the mycelium to cover the agar. After that I transferred the inoculated agar to sterilized mason jars with a hole in the top for air flow and a cotton pad to prevent contamination. I tried the following growth media: flax seed, oat grass (cut in 1 inch pieces), wheat, 33:33:33 mixture. I filled the jars to the shoulder in each case and then added water to cover. I do not have a pressure cooker, so I allowed the jars to sit overnight to allow any fungal or bacterial spores already present on the medium to "bloom" for lack of a better word. Then I heated them all in a boiling water bath for twenty or thirty minutes to pasteurize. After they cooled to room temperature, I added the agar. I keep the house between 65 and 70 degrees depending on time of day. I moved the jars from my office which is usually a bit warmer to the basement which is a bit cooler about halfway through the process.
Mason Jar Results:
Oat grass: Initial growth was the fastest. Appeared to be a preferred medium for Lepista. Adding the water in the prep stage appeared to be a mistake though. It became waterlogged and the mycelium stopped growing. It's still alive on the oat grass, but there hasn't been any new growth in weeks.
Wheat: Easily the worst of the growth media choices. Swelled a ton in the jar and compacted. I probably shouldn't have filled the jar quite as much as I did, but I don't think it would have improved the final result much. The mycelium did not appear to grow on the wheat at all. Lepista in this jar was dead after a couple weeks.
Flax seed: Very good growth media. I had the same swelling issue as the wheat; however, the hard seed coat prevented it from compacting in the same way as the wheat. Flax appears to be a very forgiving media for first generation grain cultures of Lepista.
Mixture: Initially, the mixture did ok but not great. It had the same issues as the wheat only jar. It became over compacted. I think this was in part due to me layering the media instead of thoroughly mixing, the nature of the wheat in general, and overfilling the jar. After a few weeks, I noticed the mycelium was still growing on this media, but it wasn't penetrating down into the jar very well. I transferred the mixture from the one jar to two other alcohol sterilized jars and broke up the media. A few weeks later, the jars were still not completely filled with mycelium. However when comparing the mycelium on the flax medium with the mixture media, the mixture produced much denser, healthier mycelium (in my opinion).
My suggestions:
Start lepista spore on agar and transfer to flax for first generation grain spawn. If you decide to produce more grain spawn from the initial spawn, the wheat, flax, grass mixture does really well provided you do not compact the media. I think bag culture would be better than mason jar so the grain can be broken up.
Next steps:
I am going to fruit the lepista in fruiting bins on a combination of sawdust pellets and blood meal. The blood meal is probably too expensive to use normally, but I have it on hand because I do a lot of gardening. 13:1 ratio pellets to blood meal by volume. I am going to do an inch of perlite saturated with water, then 3-4 inches of growth media, then another layer of saturated perlite. The bins will be covered with plastic wrap with an air hole covered by a cotton pad. I am going to let the mycelium fill the bins. Then I will begin misting the bin daily to encourage fruiting. I'll write another update in a month or two.
So unfortunately at this point I had a very severe Trich infection. At least two of my tubs are infected. I suspect the other two are as well, but I am waiting to see. I will likely have to start over... Part of the learning process, I suppose.
Edited by mjn56 (01/26/22 08:29 AM)
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