Mycology

This mushroom recently popped up in my backyard, and also did around the same time last year. I am in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US.

Anyone able to help identify what this might be?

First pics of my first pins. I cut slits in the bag on Sunday and saw the first pins appear yesterday morning, now they're growing fast. This clump is already a full inch (25mm) tall, and I have four openings in the bag that are all pinning. I've been misting them a couple times a day but now I'll be working from home until next Monday so I can try to spray them more often.

For anyone who hasn't seen my previous posts, I started out with a very small sample of spawn from ebay just over two months ago. I expanded that out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels, and then on July 4th I split a jar between two fruiting bags with pasteurized straw (I also have two bags of blue oysters and opened one of those on Sunday, but no pins from it yet).

This is my first time trying to grow mushrooms so I've been researching and asking questions every step of the way, but so far so good! I also have never tasted oysters before so that will be a new experience too. Now I just have to temper my impatience until it's time to harvest...

[Update] Adding a second pic this morning. This is about 12 hours later and they've grown significantly again. For reference, the bag is about the size of a sheet of paper.

[2nd update] It's been five days now since I opened the bag for fruiting. Here's a pic of what the mushrooms currently look like. As far as what I've read, I expected them to get MUCH larger than this, but with the upturned caps I really believe these are done growing and should have been harvested yesterday (note this image shows the largest clump of the group). Any thoughts?

My first oyster pins appeared today and I've been thinking about humidity control. I have this big tub I made my still air box from and I've been wondering about using it to hold the two fruiting bags I have. I was concerned that maybe the X slices wouldn't get enough fresh air if I covered them, but then I've been worried about keeping up the humidity. Now that I'm seeing some pinning though I'm feeling like the humidity is more important? I live in Colorado, which isn't quite desert but the humidity in the house typically drops below 40% during the day (it's high right now because we've been getting some rain showers).

For reference, my SAB is a typical DIY, made from a large tub with just a couple hand-sized holes cut out. There's not a lot of airflow in that room anyway, and I'm not sure how much fresh air the mushrooms need once they start growing. Of course I realize they won't be able to stay in the SAB too long, I know they'll outgrow the available space, but I'm just thinking for the next few days, or however long it takes them to really fill in.

So, any thought on this? Should I close them up in the box or just leave them in open air?

I'd really appreciate help in identifying these. Sorry the photos are not the best

Interesting fungus. Sadly full of maggots as you can see in the photo, so nothing for the dehydrator today.

Thought he was a peice of trash at first 😅

When I found a group of these growing in the grass I thought that they were St. George's Mushrooms. I then took a spore print and it was reddish brown rather than the expected white, so I then I thought I may have a toxic Inocybe instead, and lost all confidence in my ability of being able to recognize edible mushrooms... Looking through pictures, I was eventually able to figure out that it is actually an edible Agaricus campestris.

TL;DR: how would negative pressure and blowing out the air from the tent change my setup?

Right now, I use an old PC fan inside the tent, which continuously blows fresh air from the outside through a slit. It's constantly on, but pretty weak.

The FAE isn't optimal for my oysters, but sufficient. The stems are slightly prolonged, but still totally fine.

Right next to the fan is the tube of my terrarium fogger, and the fan disperses the fog inside the tent. The RH is always about 75-90%, which is fine for me. And the underside of it is opened, so the CO2 flows to the bottom and gets out of it.

The setup itself works fine, but I have one major problem: water consumption.

The room, where the tent is located, feels really humid, which isn't great in regards of molds, especially in the winter.

I need to use a lot of (destilled) water, which is also expensive. For my roundabout 2x1,50 m tent I consume about 5 liters a week, which is a lot!

Sometimes, it condensates on the outside and pools up at the bottom tray.

I thought about creating a suction tube at the bottom, which draws out the "used" air and blows it outside the window. So, basically, negative pressure instead of slight positive. I already have a fan for that lying around. It is a lot stronger, do I need to choke it a bit? What cycles of "on and off" would you recommend?

Is programming an arduino a good idea for that? What alternatives would you recommend instead?

How would that, all in all, change the things, especially the water consumption?

So my two bags of pink oysters, which haven't appeared to be doing much on anything, have suddenly pinned right behind the air vent on both bags. The first picture is a bunch of little guys like I expected it to start out as, but the second bag is one massive stem as wide as the cap! For reference, the air vent patch black clicks on these bags are about 1.25" wide.

Did I do something wrong in sealing the top of the bags, or is it common to see this happen right behind the vent? Maybe I put too much straw in the bags? It's hard to see in the pictures, but they seem pretty healthy, however there has been VERY little mycelial growth in these bags so far and it seems premature to start opening them up. Any suggestions?

I have some pink spawn which was being expanded out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels. There's been good growth and since a couple weeks ago the jar appeared to be completely colonized (at which time I left one jar sitting and moved another jar to a couple fruiting bags). It's been sitting on the basement floor since then, but I've noticed some pink coloration that seems to have gone throughout the jar, and there seems to be a bit of the pink also in the fruiting bags.

I prepared some jars of blue oyster spawn at the same time, using the same batch of rye and popcorn, and those jars are still snow white. This has me wondering, could I have possibly gotten contamination ONLY in the pink oyster jars while all of the blue oyster jars somehow escaped contamination? Or is this pink color natural for pink oysters? It just seems like an awful big coincidence that only the pink oysters would get contaminated when everything was prepped together in the still-air box and there was definitely cross-exposure between the jars.

Since this is my first batch of oysters I'm just not sure what I should be expecting.

Every summer in my neighborhood, this one tree will fruit a silky rosegill and we have standing permission from the homeowner to harvest it. This year, looks like there are two. I wish I'd passed by the tree earlier this week before the big one started to shrivel.

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2023.1229693

Teliospore 1000x Magnified in Phase Contrast

Yesterday evening I made this nice picture in phase contrast of a teliospore of Gymnosporangium clavariiforme I found and posted earlier. Measures roughly 85 x 14 µm. Quite proud of it, since this is one of the first usable images I got with the new microscope 😉

#microscopy #nature #mycology #fungi #biology #microscope #photography #mushroom #image #picture @mycology