Category: Mushrooms

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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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Two Medicinal Mushrooms: Fomitopsis Betulina and Fomitopsis Pinicola [EN]

Fomitopsis Betulina (Birch Polypore)

An amazing medicinal mushrooms that likes to grow on birch trees. This plant has been used for thousands of years (a lump was found in a medicine pouch when they discovered the almost 6000 year old body Ötzi the Ice Man some years ago!).

It act as an immune tonic, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, anti-parasitic, laxative, anti-septic, anti-viral and anti-bacterial. Studies have indicated that the Birch Polypore acts as an aromatase inhibitor, meaning it helps to prevent the conversion of androgen hormones into estrogen. This is important in both men and women as high estrogen levels are linked to many hormonal imbalances and cancers.

Fomitopsis Pinicola (Red Belted Conk)

Fomitopsis Pinicola is a widespread wood-eating medicinal mushroom who goes by the common names Red-belted Conk and Red-banded Polypore. This species often grows on dead or dying conifers, but can also consume various hardwoods. Red-banded Polypore has a cream-colored pore surface, from which reproductive spores are released. This tough polypore is perennial, often persisting for years. Though not well known as a medicinal, Greg Marley writes that decoctions and tinctures made from this tree mushroom are anti-inflammatory and immune system supporting.

From a research dated 31st January 2020: “The compounds that are present in the fruiting bodies of F.pinicola included many useful enzymes, steroids, triterpenes and triterpenes derivatives, anti-tumor active constituents, and health beneficial nutritious compounds. These principal compounds showed important medicinal effects on the human body by providing a shield effect to the internal organs against diseases and also heal the damaged tissues and organs. The pharmacological effects of F.pinicola active constituents include anti-tumor, anti-diabetic, anti-hyperlipidemic by controlling obesity, anti-oxidant effect, anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties”.

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Substrates for Pleurotus Ostreatus [EN]

Pleurotus Ostreatus (but other types of Pleurotus family as well) will grow on almost any ligno-cellulosic material.

A short list of products could be: straw, corn cobs, sawdust, cork, banana leaves, cotton seed hulls, newspaper, cardboard, toilet paper rolls, coffee pulp, sawdust, cocoa, peanut and coconut shells, cotton seed hulls, Jamaica, cassava peels, cotton, sorghum, corn stalks, grass, clover, wood, wastes of rice, wheat, cotton from textile industry, corncobs, crushed bagasse and molasses from sugar industry, water hyacinth, water lily, bean, wheat straw, leaves, oil-palm fiber, paper and paddy.

See same examples:

Date Palm leaves: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250492/

Ficus Vasta leaves: https://www.imedpub.com/articles/cultivation-of-pleurotus-ostreatus-mushroom-on-ficus-vastaleaves-solid-waste-of-plant-at-dilla-university-ethiopia.pdf

Grevillea robusta leaves: https://academicjournals.org/journal/JYFR/article-full-text-pdf/99C47C847266

Banana leaves, rice straw, wheat straw, mixture of rice and wheat straw and saw dust: http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-0618/ijsrp-p7832.pdf

Production of insulation panels with Pleurotus Ostreatus mycelium: https://criticalconcrete.com/producing-mycelium-insulation/

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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]”