Mycology

Anyone know more about the cause? It's happened to me a couple times with cultures that proved clean. My best guess is temperature fluctuation, it's pretty hot here

I've been posting this on reddit, so forgive me if you've already read about it...

I have long had an interest in trying to grow my own mushrooms, but recently started doing a lot of reading to learn the process. I had intended to start out growing a couple types of oysters on cut straw, but while I was collecting supplies and waited for spawn to arrive I ran across an article talking about cutting up clean cardboard, boiling it to sterilize, and seeding it with chopped mushroom stems. I figured this would be a great way to practice and see how much contamination I would get.

Besides the oysters, I wanted to also try cremini/button mushrooms. One of the local grocery stores has them in a bulk bin which appears to not be processed, and it allowed me to pick out some that looked like they came straight from the ground with obvious signs on mycelium still on the base. Great! So I set everything up, drilled some air holes in a small food container, added the cardboard and stems, and put it away in the closet. And then a couple days later I read that creminis actually want a rich mixture of manure and/or grain to grow on. Well crap...

The point was still to watch for contamination though, so I let it continue. A week passed without contamination and I was happy that it appeared I had cleaned things pretty well (and we're talking a very hasty setup on my kitchen countertop in open air). On Sunday, I spotted some white fuzz. Oh boy, this could be it, the experiment is almost over. But then I checked on Monday... and it's not just fuzz, I have actual STRANDS growing across the cardboard. Could it be?!?

Well, today it's still looking pretty promising, and I'm seeing more coming out from various points in the cardboard. It's hard to get a good look at everything because of the humidity, but today is day 12 since I set up the container and there are no greens, blues, or reds anywhere. I am hopeful, although frankly amazed at what seems to be happening.

In the meantime my oyster spawn arrived but it was less than expected so I have picked up some quart jars and am waiting to receive some rye grain. I have blue and pink oyster spawn which I will split between two jars each to expand before trying to move it to grow bags with straw. It will take a little longer than planned but I'll get there. And I'm waiting for my container to be fully colonized with the unexpected spawn (or to see a definite sign that it is NOT mycelium) and then I'll get that transferred to a grain jar as well.

However it goes, I'm having fun!

An interview with the world's leading mycologist

I have been making an effort to actually identify the contaminants that grow in my petri dishes. In this case the contaminants are those dark green spore islands.

Looking at them under the microscope reveals that the spores of this species are produced at the tip of these finger-like structures. These spore-producing structures are called "conidiophores". The presence of these structures is a characteristic of the phylum Ascomycota, within the fungi kingdom.

Different groups of ascomycetes produce conidia with different morphologies. Looking through microscopic pictures I can see that this morphology of conidia is characteristic of the Penicillium genus.

I am having trouble narrowing it down to the species level. Maybe P. digitatum or P. roqueforti, based on the macroscopic morphology and how common they are. But there are too many other options, so it is difficult for me to know for sure. If anyone around here is good with identification, please let me know.

It is also possible to do this using store-bought tempeh, which is often easier to find that the tempeh starter!

I recently discovered the AntsCanada YouTube channel. This guy makes amazing terrariums for growing ant colonies (and sometimes other species), and has some very informative videos with high quality macro videography. I have learned a lot about ants watching his videos these past few days.

This particular video might be valuable to people into mycology too. Several animal species are known to farm fungi, but this is the only instance I know of this process being documented in video in such detail.

Usually Shaggy Mane mushrooms are prepared fresh, before they "deliquesce" into a black goo. However, the black goo is edible, and I thought that this recipe was very cool as it shows the black goo being used as an interesting ingredient.

Two of the most common contaminants when growing mushrooms. This is a nice video explaining how to tell them apart.

Last year I tried to grow king oyster mushrooms in paper towels (to get an effect similar to this: https://www.fieldforest.net/product/Oyster-TeePee-Kit/Indoor-Introductions). The paper towels were colonized very efficiently, but it stayed several months without fruiting.

Eventually, trichoderma began growing on top of the mycelium, and I gave up, so I put the whole thing into my worm bin.

I was under the impression that any spent mushroom blocks added to the worm bin would be doomed, because of the very competitive environment in the bin (molds, earthrowms, bacteria, springtails, mites, etc..., many of which I thought would eat and out-compete a mushroom)

Welp, I was wrong. It has been easily over 6 months and suddenly I found these very nice fruits just popping up in the bin. These guys are actually quite resilient!

I have learned something new. Mushrooms can indeed survive and fruit in a worm bin!*

* I have thrown spent blocks of several other species and this is the first time that I have seen mushrooms fruiting in the bin.

via mefi

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/214527

Fungi most likely being the first multicellular organism on the planet makes this highly intriguing. Hopefully the increase in fungal curiosity makes it easier to study mycology on an academic level here soon!

I was experimenting with culture isolation and became a bit distracted with other things. This agar plate was prepared in October and left in a drawer, so it has been about 3 months since then.

Another angle:

This is an interesting review on experiments that attempt to unravel the environmental triggers that cause the button mushroom to fruit.

Burrowed this from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/shrooms/comments/rwp7u9/_/

In my opinion, this video is one of the clearest and most concise explanations of how to grow mushrooms at home.