Topic: Growing mushrooms

[florence]

Has anyone tried growing mushrooms - either on inoculated wood or newspaper?
I've ordered some Oyster mushroom spawn to try and produce my own mushrooms - am I likely to see any results and has anyone tried? Do you have any tips for a beginner? What's the best substrate to use? I've seen coffee grounds can be used as well as newspaper and sawdust.
Thanks for any top tips.

[Beersmith]

I've done this successfully from kits (oyster type) but never succeeded from scratch with spore..

I have a good idea where I went wrong. I used sawdust as growing medium. Dampened and sterilised in a microwave oven. But the sawdust was from softwood and so had pine resins and this completely prevented mycelium growth.

Sawdust is reported to work well but must be deciduous type. Hardly worth the trouble for common or garden buttons, but certainly for oysters or shitake. I certainly plan to give it another go sometime. I'd be really interested to hear about your experiences.

Good luck!!

[winecap]

In my experience its a bit hit and miss, but can be really good. I would recommend getting dowels or whatever from a reputable supplier. Wouldn't try the cheaper ebay alternatives again as they never yet produced anything for me. You really can't tell what you've got until they fruit and its annoying to spend the time and effort and get nothing. The straw kits are easy and effective but in my opinion the mushrooms only taste good grown on wood. Oyster mushrooms crop heavily but shiitaki less so. I guess that just means they are more particular.
As an alternative try king stropharia (winecaps). They are delicious and easy to grow in piles of woodchip. Ann Miller is one of my prefered suppliers. When they work they're great, so worth persisting with.

[florence]

Thanks for the tips and Ann Miller details - her website looks good. I'll try the Pink Oyster mushrooms I bought on e-bay and let you know if anything grows.

[Vinlander]

This topic came at a perfect time for a brag - I've just found maybe 150g of Wood Blewits growing in a builder's bag of well-rotted woodchip that I use for growing purple & red carrots above the fly (I can grow yellows like Yellowstone without protection but apparently anything more colourful is irresistable).

The chip was rotted for 2-3 years in a spit-deep trench (ie. a main path), and has been sitting in the bag for 2 more years (because I gave that bag a rest in 2017).

I know I have occasional blewits in my back garden - but most grew alongside a compost heap, and the roots might have been in it, so they might have moved with compost from there, or it's entirely possible they arrived with the chip. They lurk everywhere - I also got a single morel in one spring - about 15 years ago - after I made spoil heap by digging a pond in my back garden - never seen one before or since...

I have had various fungi growing in 5-10cm layers of fresh chip I use to protect sheet plastic tarps from UV - but they were mostly an eerie green/buff (Stropharia pseudocyanea?). Not the delicate blue-violet of blewits - if you like the taste of mushroom but richer, they are pretty much the best (unfortunately they must not be eaten raw or undercooked).

I was going to try adding some municipal eco-compost to that bag (for bigger carrots)  but now it's off-limits because I want more blewits next year - nothing is going in there except more well-rotted chip.

Cheers.

[winecap]

I confess I am jealous. I tried a blewit bed once but it didn't produce. I also tried morels once, but no luck there either. I've been sticking to the easy ones lately. Woodchip is the stuff though. Usually available for free it is guaranteed to produce mushrooms of some sort or other so worth trying to inoculate. My friend found morels growing on woodchip mulch at the side of a carpark in London. I haven't been so lucky, but I am forever hopeful. Meanwhile the winecaps keep me going. We also get the occasional giant puffball on our allotment site and if I find any old ones they always end up at the bottom of my hedge to drop their spores.

[Vinlander]

I forgot another gift mushroom from a few years ago - I got a CD sized parasol mushroom out of a pot under my front bay window - it was filled with old spent growbag and a bit of kitchen compost - nothing special - it had been used for a few crops of peppers and purslane.

The only thing that rings true is that it's in a sunny spot under the eaves so it heats through and dries out quickly, but I think that year had an unusually horizontal downpour that hit it after it had dried out in October (probably).

Good eating but a similar taste to a good chestnut mushroom from the shops - not worth bothering with unless it is 100% spot-on every aspect of the wiki description and the recommended size (completely open in this case).

I ought to mention I never even think of picking anything that looks like an ordinary mushroom because that's very close to how the most poisonous species look.

It would be crazy when there are so many tasty species that look entirely different and have fewer lookalikes, and even fewer properly poisonous lookalikes. But you still need to consult  books or wiki (preferably both) immediately before you prepare them.

Cheers.

PS. Talking of oyster mushrooms I used to buy them in the supermarket - they used to sell 3 colours that were otherwise identical but only the yellow ones were worth it, and nobody seems to sell them any more. I did try a yellow "oyster" kit once but they were tiny caps the size of a £2, nothing like the serving-spoon shape and size of the good ones, and they had very little flavour.

The Merryhill ones look identical to the ones I grew - you can see from the picture that they are tiny compared to the box. The Suttons ones look bigger but the picture is NOT the pot they sell - it looks like a full size fruit crate - and they still have the wrong cap shape.

[DrJohnH]

Following from Vinlander's comments-

It is the wrong time of year, but (ideally) take a course if you want to pick wild mushrooms, Roger Phillips nicely done guide is a great resource. But you have to to get it right...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mushrooms-Other-Britain-Europe-original/dp/0330264419/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1516995336&sr=1-1&keywords=roger+phillips+mushroom

[florence]

I also have small fungi growing in the wood chip paths in Autumn. I've no idea what they are - I have the Roger Phillips book but have never tried checking, just assumed they are probably poisonous.
The wood chip supply at the moment at the allotment site looks as though it's mainly conifer. Does anyone know if I could have a mushroom pit with this? I've read that hardwood is better than soft wood.

[winecap]

Relatively few mushroom species are actually poisonous, but likewise very few are good to eat. The vast majority are just not nice to eat. Nevertheless you should always be sure of what you have before you eat it!
I had a vague  memory that the king stropharia was possible to grow on mixed mulch containing conifer, but checking with Ann Millers site it doesn't say that now, and I have only ever tried with hardwood chippings. Probably best to wait until the ideal woodchip comes along.

[Vinlander]

I get velvet shanks growing on the joists I use to hold up my raised beds, so presumably they like conifer wood - though they may be a subspecies.

Anyway they look too much like some deadly poisonous varieties to be sensible or comfortable to eat - you need a really good specimen to make a proper ID and that's quite rare because the caps are quite fragile - so definitely best avoided.

For me the final, key reason for avoiding them is that the the taste isn't particularly special - why take the risk? Best to wait for something really good that's easy to ID - plenty of good ones have no really toxic ringers. You can buy better enoki anyway...

Cheers.