The Farm (jan 31\18)

Hi ya everyone,

Been up to a few new things on the farm the last bunch of weeks. 

It’s winter here on the island and my thoughts are full as I peruse seed catalogues watch YouTube videos of different gardening techniques and videos from fellow market garden farmers etc.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at cultivating mushrooms since I started with two kits last spring.  So I did a bunch of research, driving Rusty crazy with my many shroomy conversation and errands to get what I need.  It’s funny in one of our conversations Rusty stood there in the family room and said…. “if I let you you would have this whole house filled with plants and other growing stuff”.  Poor guy… he’s right it would be a two story greenhouse with pots and flats and cell packs and shelves….. well I better stop there I’m sure you get the picture.

So shrooms….. I’ve been growing blue oyster, elm, shittake, pink oysters and it’s been fun.  One day in my youtubing  came across a few videos on how to grow your own white button and cremini/portobello mushrooms.  For me I thought well that’s easy enough I don’t need anything special and they are easily grown in the green room with my micro greens and sprouts.

So I did some research figured out what I needed and started my project.  So the white button and cremini grow similarly with a few exceptions and to start them off I decided to try the spore collection route first.  In this method you get a wide variety of shrooms because you are collecting spores from multiple shrooms.  I could go the more difficult route by cultivating mycelium from one choosen shroom which would give me all the same traits of the choosen shroom but I thought collecting spores might be more fun.

So I started with organic white button and cremini mushrooms.  I cut off the stems and the underside flap to expose the gills of the mushrooms and placed them on white card stock to get my spore prints.

 After about 24 hours I had the coolest collection of spores…… so I put them in a sterile bag cause I did have time that day to start the boxes.  So the next day I prepped the boxes and cut up the card stock with sterilized scissors and combined them in the mushroom substrate needed for each type.

They are in the warm room downstairs next to the wood stove cultivating mycelium nicely.  It’s a slow process but it looks like it’s working out pretty good.  Once they start to pin…. I will have lots of shrooms.  The white button box should produce shrooms for about 6 months as long as they are harvested and the soil is amended properly.  It’s so cool.

I also had my oyster and shittake mushroom blocks that I ordered and have been growing.  They are small blocks and produce enough for just home use.  So of course by now you can probably guess what I’m gonna do…..he he lol.

The blocks of mushrooms slow down production after a few “flushes” of mushroom harvests cause they run out of food to eat.  They will eventually stop producing and that’s when most people throw them in the composter and buy a new block…..not me….again I did my research and bought what I needed and started to recultivate my blocks…..and wowzers they are doing so well just a week or 2 after “replanting”.  It’s amazing really because the blocks had dried up and I wasn’t reslly sure if it would work.

So here’s a brief description of what I did here.

I bought a few 5 gallon pails drilled holes around the bucket and on the bottom.

I then proceeded to cut up the straw(My substrate) in 3-4 inch pieces and then sterilize my new buckets.  Substrate is another word for shroom food. 

Once the substrate had been cooking for the prescribed amount of time it needed to cool to room temp so that I could add the mycelium I had.  I laid out a bag on the table and laid out the substrate to cool a little faster to room temperature.  While the substrate was sterilizing I cut up the spent mushroom block into small pieces.

The small pieces were then added to the substrate mixed together and placed in the bucket.  I labeled the bucket closed the lid and put it into a black garbage bag and placed it near my wood stove to encourage myclilium growth. 

It sure didn’t take long…in another week I will start two more buckets…..  the goal is to have enough buckets going so that I will have fresh shrooms for the market and us every week.

If I feel ambitious I might try cloning the mycilliuim from a choose shroom and see how that goes.

When the button and portobello shrooms start to pin I’ll post some pics.

Cheers for now🙃