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It's not much to look at yet, but my oyster spawn is doing nicely after only four days. I picked up some spawn off ebay for pink and blue oysters, not realizing just how tiny an amount 10g really was. Well I had already been reading about expanding spawn in grain jars, and was advised here to also try popcorn kernels in addition to the rye berries I had already ordered. I got seven jars cooked and sterilized last weekend and did the transfer in a still air box on Tuesday. What you are seeing in the pic below is the blue oyster spawn, of which the 10g was divided between three jars (the third one not pictured is another popcorn jar), so there was very little to start with in each jar. I'd say it's pretty happy though!

Once these jars are fully colonized I will be pasteurizing chopped straw in a cold water lime bath to set up my fruiting bags. I'm going to try splitting one jar of spawn between two fruiting bags to see how that goes. I know it's a bit thin, but obviously I'm in no big hurry and can wait for the fruiting bags to colonize.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pic...

I thought some folks might want to see an update on what I've been growing. For reference, I tried to grown button mushroom spawn on boiled cardboard, only to learn a few days later that this shouldn't be possible. Imagine my surprise when the mycelium started growing anyway!

So it's been about three weeks now and growth has been painfully slow, but then again they didn't really have any decent food. I also realized when I opened the container that there was still way too much moisture in the cardboard. Today I transferred what I could into grain jars to give it a better chance at growth. Basically I went through all the layers and peeled the cardboard apart, then tore off smaller chunks of anything that had decent growth on it. This was divided between a jar of popcorn kernels and a jar of rye berries, so I have a good chance of one or both jars really expanding the small amount of spawn I had available. Considering this was started from chopped stems I got at the grocery store, I'd say I'm doing pretty good so far!

I've started doing some reading on how to make the pasteurized compost for this type of mushroom, hoping to start picking up supplies next weekend to get it ready.

I just started noticing this happen today. For example I was reading posts in the mycology community and posts from comics started appearing at the top of the page. I'm assuming this is a bug but is there anything I can do about it from my end, or do I just have to wait for the next update? FYI I'm just on the desktop browser, not using any apps.

Four days ago I added some purchased oyster spawn to five jars containing popcorn or rye (after sterilizing of course). The next day I noticed these white spots on the kernels of only one jar. For reference, the pink oyster spawn in this jar was also added to a jar of rye, and there is no sign of these spots in that jar, so I believe the spawn itself was fine. Transfer was done in a still-air box, and this wasn't even the last jar I did, so I'm not really sure if it is contam or not?

One thing that strikes me (and I'm not sure if you can see the detail in this pic), I have seen white spots like this on sweet corn, which I believe is also a fungus, but the popcorn kernels were boiled for 20 minutes, dried for a couple hours, then put in a pressure cooker for 90 minutes at 15psi, so I don't know how any fungus would have remained in the jars?

Regardless, I was wondering if anyone had seen something like this before, and if the jar is likely a loss? The oyster spawn is actually growing growing, you can see one cluster starting right in the center, and it seems like it's cleaning the kernels that it expands to? This is my first time trying to expand spawn so I thought I'd ask for opinions on this...

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/581212

I had many expectations for today, but learning that mushrooms sweat wasn't one of them.

The scientists are still unsure why fungi might want to keep cool.

In their paper, the authors speculate that it might have something to do with creating optimal conditions for spore formation, or it may help fungi spread their spores — by altering the temperature, they might be causing tiny winds that can blow the spores around.

It’s also possible that this phenomenon is due to something else entirely. For example, evapotranspiration also increases humidity, and when asked if it’s possible that the fungi are trying to keep humid, and the cooling is simply a by-product, Casadevall said it was conceivable.

I love seeing these groups pop up everywhere! They are such a fantastic resource to help prevent deadly mistakes, but also great for learning more about the incredible variety of mushrooms all around us, many of which are too tiny to casually notice but contain such beauty. As a kid I would hunt morels with my grandpa and that probably inspired me to keep my eyes open. Several years ago I had some huge mushrooms pop up in my yard, and after getting a positive ID I fried them up and ate them. Sometimes you just get lucky with what the squirrels drag into your yard.

Now I've finally taken the next step to growing my own, and yesterday transferred my first starts of oyster mushrooms to grain jars. I also managed to start some cremini spawn on boiled cardboard, and just giving it a little more time before transferring that to grain jars as well. Can't wait to taste all the results!

Like Mastodon, Lemmy is a federated group of servers, however in order for a server (also known as an 'instance') to be aware of content from another instance, someone has to let that server know the community exists...

In my case, my home is on mander.xyz. If I go to the communities tab and search for Longmont, nothing comes up. From the post on reddit I knew that the home of this group is at "https://lemmy.ml/c/longmont" so I simply put that whole string in the community search, and that tells my server of its existence. Then I can immediately go back and search for "Longmont" again, and now the group shows up and allows me to subscribe to it.

And of course this works for any other communities you are interested in, but which aren't hosted on the Lemmy server you have an account with. Once you or someone else on your server has subscribed to a community, anyone else on your server will also now immediately see that community without needing the full path.

Currently the list of communities in the sidebar are sorted alphabetically, however the ones beginning with lower-case letters are sorted to the bottom of the list. Would it be possible to get that fixed so that the list is sorted without being case-sensitive? I realize it's a pretty minor thing in the broad scope of everything that's currently happening with Lemmy but I thought I would ask.

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!

I'm trying to transfer my subscriptions from lemmy.ml over to a new account here, but the community search is failing to find most of those subs. For example: comics, esp32, selfhost, and datahoarder.

Even if I try reaching the url directly (https://mander.xyz/c/homeserver@lemmy.ml) I get a "404: couldnt_find_community" error. Are these communities blocked from Mander for some reason?