Category: Guide

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Hydrating aloe vera facial gel [EN]

Mix in a jar:

  • two tablespoons of fresh aloe vera gel extract → hydrating, soothing, anti-aging, stimulating: it’s a perfect guard against pollution, it stimulates collagen, fibroblasts and hyaluronic acid synthesis and it counteracts water retention.
    Do you want to know how to extract aloe vera gel? Have a look here! https://rot.rebus.cat/index.php/it/2020/03/31/gel-di-aloe-vera/
  • some freshly juiced lemon → astringent, antisepting, brightening (thanks to its large amounts of vitamin C, the lemon juice removes dead skin cells through an enzymatic peeling, keeping the skin clear).
  • a teaspoon of raw honey → moisturising and protective, antimicrobial, antiseptic, antifungal, antioxidant, humectant (attracts and retains moisture on the skin), preservative (it attracts and retains moisture in the skin, creating an environment inhospitable to microbes).

To better preserve the product, store it in the refrigerator. This will also provide a refreshing and invigorating effect!

It can also be used as a facial mask: apply the product in large quantities before going to sleep, it will absorb during the night.

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Pleurotus Ostreatus on animal litter spawn [EN]

Preparing the substrate for spawn

  • 150g of animal litter (natural, organic, compressed wood)
  • 300g of water
  • One spoon of starch (potato or manioca)
  • 4% of ecologic honey (cane sugar or molasses is also fine)

Dilute the honey and starch into the water, then add it to the wooden bits. Soak the wood litter in water for a while. When the wood is fully absorbed, it doesn’t have to show extra water on the ground, nor dried parts either. Leave it rest for sometime.

Steam sterilize the jar

Put the wooden bits with all the ingredients in a jar (the lid of the jar must have an air filter, see previous articles on how to do it).

In a pot, put some water on the ground, then keep the jar lifted up with some metal structure. turn on the fire and when the water boils, keep the jar to steam-sterilize for about one hour.

Inoculation

The procedure is the same as explained in previous articles: with all the environment clean and the tools sterilized, cut open a piece of Pleurotus Ostreatus mushroom and put some pieces of the internal side of it in to the jar.

Close the lid and keep the jars at about 23 degrees Celsius for a bunch of weeks.

Your jar will be fully colonized when you see the white mycelium running all over it.

Now you have a full jar of spawn ready for the inoculation of your final chosen substrate to grow the mushrooms on.

Enjoy!

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A practical guide to make Effective Microorganisms [EN]

Hi there!

Today I’ll write about making your own culture of EM (Effective Microorganism). We’ve wrote about EM in two previous articles:

In this guide I’ll elaborate the method a bit more, and show you a few photos.

In this moment I’m making EM cause I need them for two reasons:

  1. I need to clean the pipes of the kitchen sink in my house. Recently, the water start flowing down more slowly and I believe there is an accumulation of organic matter in the pipes.
  2. I’m experimenting with a small-size, balcony-type, earth-worm-powered compost, and I want to boost it regularly with EM like you would do on Bokashy Compost.

I’ll write down the instructions as well as my personal considerations and photos around the whole method here below:

  1. Take a handful of rice, let’s say 80-100 grams and put it in a container. Of course, you should use ecologic, integral and unprocessed rice for this purpose.
Continue reading “A practical guide to make Effective Microorganisms [EN]”
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Mushrooms Cultivation: DIY Liquid Culture [EN]

Hello!

Today I will write about making your own liquid culture for mushroom growing.

The liquid culture is a liquid mix of nutrients that will help the mycelium to grow healthy prior to inoculation. It’s very effective cause with a very little amount of liquid culture you can inoculate directly a big amount of soil or spawn.

Liquid Culture of Pleorotus Eryngii: you can see the liquid culture completely colonized and the white fluffy mycelium growing all over inside the jar
Continue reading “Mushrooms Cultivation: DIY Liquid Culture [EN]”
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DIY Mushroom Spawn creation – Experimental inoculation of pistachio shells [EN]

Hi there!
Today I’ll write about an experiment I conduct by inoculating pistachio nut shells in order to create my own spawn for further mushroom growing.

Soaked pistachios shells jar When filling the jar, I added some pieces of wet, squeezed cardboard to help absorb the excess water inside it

For this experiment I used a fresh mushroom bought in supermarket, the King Oyster mushroom (Pleorotus Eryngii).

Continue reading “DIY Mushroom Spawn creation – Experimental inoculation of pistachio shells [EN]”

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Notes: Growing Mushrooms on coffee ground [EN]

These are the expanded notes of a workshop I was participating a while ago.  You can maybe find some useful information in here, it’s a sort of a very resumed article that explain a method for cultivating mushrooms on your own at home + some background information. More than a guide, is an overview over the method. Enjoy!

Mushrooms Workshop

Theory

Mushrooms that grows in the nature are mainly decomposing the matter. They are at the base of life: they break materials like lignine, cellulose and minerals and split complex elements into smaller chemical substances that are beneficial not only for the organism itself, but also more easily absorbed from the organisms in the surrounding environment. What we call “mushroom”, is just the visible part of a very extended system of “roots” (hyphae) called mycelium, which is the actual organism.

Continue reading “Notes: Growing Mushrooms on coffee ground [EN]”

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Growing King Oyster Mushroom on coffee ground in a plastic container [EN]

Today I will write about growing Pleorotus Eryngii – the King Oyster Mushroom – in a plastic container.

I used a plastic container suited for keeping your spaghetti dry in the shelf.
As substrate, I used spent coffee ground (about 60%), carton (20%), peanut and pistachio shells (20%).

The plastic container I used is made in PP 5 (Polypropylene).

Details:
The container is about 2.2 Liters and I used water at 90 degrees to sterilize it internally, just a couple of washes. In addition, I cleaned it internally with alcohol, as the top lid is big enough to fit my hand inside. Apparently, PP 5 could even support a steam-pasteurization, but I didn’t try that yet. Continue reading “Growing King Oyster Mushroom on coffee ground in a plastic container [EN]”

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Growing Oyster Mushroom on coffee ground in a plastic bottle [EN]

Today I will write about growing Pleorotus Ostreatus – the Oyster Mushroom – in a plastic bottle.

As substrate, I used spent coffee ground (about 60%), carton (20%), peanut and pistachio shells (20%).

I used an empty water plastic bottle, made in PET 1 (Polyethylene).

Details:
The bottle is 1.5 Liter and I used water between 60 and 80 degrees to sterilize it internally, just a couple of washes. In addition, you can add some alcohol inside (don’t inhale in case you do this, hot water + alcohol creates gasses!). Higher temperatures are also possible, but water at 90-100 degrees modify the structure of Polyethylene 1, so it should be used very shortly. Continue reading “Growing Oyster Mushroom on coffee ground in a plastic bottle [EN]”