Plan is to make a substrate of cardboard coffee grounds and rolled quick oats. Who knows if it will work.

My grain spawn jars (jam jars with holes punched in the lids and micropore taped) have now twice stalled out before colonizing a layer at the bottom. I suspected overheating since they were sitting above a heating pad, but inverting the jars doesn't seem to help. I suspect CO2 accumulation.

Has anyone tried ventilating both the top and bottom of grain spawn jars? These days there are affordable diamond bits can drill holes in glass.

Top to bottom the stack (jar inverted) would be:

Tape Glass with hole Air gap Spawn Small metal lid with two holes Air gap Metal lid with two holes. Tape Aluminum foil to keep bottom tape clean.

Wire through the lid holes would hold them together to keep grain out of the air gap even when the jar is shaken.

Anyone try something like this yet?

Not sure if it's popular or anything I seen one picture of this a long time ago. But figured I'd still post in here! Just put a casing layer on then will fruit and post updates if anyone is interested! First time trying this method

After watching this video, it got me wondering how temporarily immersing cultures could be used with mycelium. Could it combine the benefits of liquid culture and agar? ie. Harder to contaminate like agar, but quicker like LC.

Here are just some questions to start.

1. Would it be practical, or even worth trying?
2. What would the medium/substrate consist of?
3. Could contamination be mitigated with the right solutions?

I'm not fucking around, no sourcing.

Edit: Bans reduced, first offenses for all parties doesn't merit a perma, upon reconsideration.

However, do not source, or help others source spores, the sub will get banned, it just takes one person reporting it to an admin, and you're done. So, some punishment is still required.

I know it’s not actually compost but it is ground up dehydrated organic waste. Assuming a person sterilized it how well do we think it would work as either a starting medium or mixed in with the substrate?

Edit: hey yall was my sons birthday yesterday so I didn’t really come back to this until now.

A LOMI is a countertop “composter” it doesn’t actually compost anything but it dehydrates and grinds scraps to a pretty fine consistency. I normally use it to do just that then I mix the remains into some dirt in my garden.

I had this thought the other day though that everything in there would in theory make good food for mushrooms and I was wondering if anyone else had done something similar.

So my plan is something like this:

Mix some LOMI “compost” in with vermiculite in a jar and inoculate it, see how that goes. If that stage goes well make a small shoebox tub with coco coir and LOMI “compost” see how that works out.

Basically my plan is to see if using the “compost” leads to some crazy Trich or other contamination.

If yes, either discontinue method or try to eliminate contamination.

If no, see if there is a measurable difference between the LOMI “compost” vs other substrates.

Thanks everyone!

Herbs like mint, oregano, thyme, spices like turmeric, cinnamon. Reasons? 1. They all have anticontam properties. If the desired mycelium can be trained to grow with these herbs, it can help to prevent contamination. 2. They are full of antioxidant and nutrients. Presumably would improve mushrooms nutritional profile of gourmet mushrooms.

Can mycelium be trained to grow with the substance present in these herbs? Also presume different mushrooms would have differential tolerance to these herbs. Anyone experiment with using these plants?

Would it continue to fruit or would the budding just stall out until the new substrate is colonized?

Share your comments, criticism, advice

Does anyone have experience drying jack frost, I dehydrate them like the others but they just seem harder to get where I want them to be.

Been all over the place with this experiment. I got some Ps. cyan spores recently and started a woodchip/straw fermentation bucket, then spread most spores out between grain spawn and compost with some added fermented hickory chips. After seeing some third party mycelial growth on surface of the straw, it occurred to me that this would probably be a much more suitable environment to try and spawn. I simply dunked the floating straw back in the brew to cover the unknown mycelium, then let it float again and inoculated about 2mL of a suspiciously LC-looking MSS (actually almost the exact color of the brew). This bucket was just hickory chips for about a week, with a strong and sour but woody odor, then beginning to smell almost a bit like mild urine/manure combined with the original smell after straw was added.

I realize the current surface growth may very well be some random, potentially contaminant fungus/fungi, and if that's the case so be it- I've got plenty of plants that would love the substrate. But I'm fairly sure this species encounters a whole lot of trich and other competing fungi in the wild and seems to fruit over a much larger radius than cubes, which says to me that under the right conditions it's not quite as vulnerable to pathogens. Likely, I assume, as a product of some kind of wood-loving bacterial symbiosis. Besides a couple agar plates I haven't seen much growth yet over about a week in my spawn, but I have a better feeling about the unprompted growth in this bucket. About half my grain spawn is completely sterilized with some additional wood chips, and the other half contains sterilized grain, but carefully added actively fermenting hickory chips. Regardless of what's growing in the bucket now I plan on spreading the finished mixture in my planters soon, so I won't be totally bummed if this brew ends up being a dud.

Above pic is post-dunk and noc.