Seeing what I can get away with growing mushrooms...

Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
I wanted to try growing mushrooms, but all the sites I went to said you needed to buy all this crap, like a pressure cooker, vermiculite, etc. So I decided to see if I could grow them using a spore print, without buying anything at all. Well, except brown rice, which is like 50 cents a pound at the Asian market. And a cubensis B+ spore print, which I got for $30 on the Internet from a site I knew was reputable.

I eat a lot of salsa, and had a couple jars laying around. I washed those, then dug through the refrigerator and found a few more that were almost empty, or were spoiled. I washed out the jars and rinsed them with bleach and tap water. Then I poured a quarter cup of brown rice in each one, along with about 1.5 times that much water. They fit well in a pot I had, so I put some silverware in the pot (to make sure there was space between the jars and the bottom of the pot) and put the jars in. Then I filled it up with water to about halfway up the jars. I put the lids on fairly loose, and boiled the water with the lid on for about 45 minutes.

Once the jars cooled off, I took them to the least-used, least-dusty, least-likely-to-have-mold-in-it room where I live. This turned out to be the guest bedroom. Then I wrapped tape around one end of a piece of copper wire (to keep my hand from burning if it got hot). I took a shower, then washed my hands really well, making sure NOT to dry them with a towel. Those things are loaded with germs. Then I got my butane mini-torch and heated up the one end of the copper wire to the point where it discolored. I held the spore print over each jar, uncapped it, scratched at the spore print so I saw them fall in the jar, then capped them again.

After three days, I saw some fuzz, so I loosened the jars to let in oxygen. Over the next few days, there was more white fuzz. One day, I saw a spot of mold in one of them, so I got a little spoon and heated it up with my torch, then scooped it out. That happened again with one of the other jars, and I scooped that mold out the same way. Eventually, the mycella took over all five jars, and after 17 days, I saw tiny mushrooms. I couldn't get the cakes out because the neck of the jar was too narrow, so I cut each cake in half and pulled out the two halves. Then I put them in a clear plastic box, and put some water in the bottom, then covered the box with saran wrap.

The tiny mushrooms grew into big mushrooms, and I had enough to trip on after about a week. So a bit more than three weeks from the spore print. We have a dehumidifier running in the basement, so I pointed the blower from that on my mushrooms to dry them. Now it's a bit more than a month and I have about an ounce of dried mushrooms, with a bunch more still in the box. Considering all the precautions I didn't take, I think I did pretty good! I didn't have to throw away a single jar, and got plenty of shrooms.

Now I'm trying to see if I can get the mycella to take over an entire casserole dish of brown rice that I baked in the oven. If that works, I'll have a steady supply of shrooms for like a year! :peace:
 
Stoney McFried

Stoney McFried

Well-Known Member
Wow, really cool.It's nice to see someone being frugal and smart.+rep!
Doctor Pot said:
I wanted to try growing mushrooms, but all the sites I went to said you needed to buy all this crap, like a pressure cooker, vermiculite, etc. So I decided to see if I could grow them using a spore print, without buying anything at all. Well, except brown rice, which is like 50 cents a pound at the Asian market. And a cubensis B+ spore print, which I got for $30 on the Internet from a site I knew was reputable.

I eat a lot of salsa, and had a couple jars laying around. I washed those, then dug through the refrigerator and found a few more that were almost empty, or were spoiled. I washed out the jars and rinsed them with bleach and tap water. Then I poured a quarter cup of brown rice in each one, along with about 1.5 times that much water. They fit well in a pot I had, so I put some silverware in the pot (to make sure there was space between the jars and the bottom of the pot) and put the jars in. Then I filled it up with water to about halfway up the jars. I put the lids on fairly loose, and boiled the water with the lid on for about 45 minutes.

Once the jars cooled off, I took them to the least-used, least-dusty, least-likely-to-have-mold-in-it room where I live. This turned out to be the guest bedroom. Then I wrapped tape around one end of a piece of copper wire (to keep my hand from burning if it got hot). I took a shower, then washed my hands really well, making sure NOT to dry them with a towel. Those things are loaded with germs. Then I got my butane mini-torch and heated up the one end of the copper wire to the point where it discolored. I held the spore print over each jar, uncapped it, scratched at the spore print so I saw them fall in the jar, then capped them again.

After three days, I saw some fuzz, so I loosened the jars to let in oxygen. Over the next few days, there was more white fuzz. One day, I saw a spot of mold in one of them, so I got a little spoon and heated it up with my torch, then scooped it out. That happened again with one of the other jars, and I scooped that mold out the same way. Eventually, the mycella took over all five jars, and after 17 days, I saw tiny mushrooms. I couldn't get the cakes out because the neck of the jar was too narrow, so I cut each cake in half and pulled out the two halves. Then I put them in a clear plastic box, and put some water in the bottom, then covered the box with saran wrap.

The tiny mushrooms grew into big mushrooms, and I had enough to trip on after about a week. So a bit more than three weeks from the spore print. We have a dehumidifier running in the basement, so I pointed the blower from that on my mushrooms to dry them. Now it's a bit more than a month and I have about an ounce of dried mushrooms, with a bunch more still in the box. Considering all the precautions I didn't take, I think I did pretty good! I didn't have to throw away a single jar, and got plenty of shrooms.

Now I'm trying to see if I can get the mycella to take over an entire casserole dish of brown rice that I baked in the oven. If that works, I'll have a steady supply of shrooms for like a year! :peace:
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cali-high

cali-high

Well-Known Member
thats crazy you skipped almost every step and you were not sterile at all and you still got strooms. but i doubt you will get a better yeild to some one who has followed all the steps
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
cali-high said:
thats crazy you skipped almost every step and you were not sterile at all and you still got strooms. but i doubt you will get a better yeild to some one who has followed all the steps
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Haha, well I already have more than I know what to do with! And yeah, I didn't lose a single jar either. I live in a pretty damp climate, so there's mold everywhere here, but I bet someone who lived in a desert area could grow mushrooms without taking any precautions at all. Heck, my uncle lives in Arizona, and you can leave fruit on the counter there and it won't rot or mold, it just dries out.

I attached a picture of my shroom box, as well as a picture of a fully colonized jar. Mmm... Newman's Own mango salsa... There aren't many mushrooms in the box because I already took out all the big ones, which dried down to about an ounce. This is from a cup and a quarter of brown rice.

Oh and Stoney, thanks for the rep!
 

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AchillesLast

AchillesLast

Well-Known Member
nice looking good man. Definitely blew me out of the water on my first go and ran I through the whole procedure step by step. My first grow attempt I went 0/5 for jars. But I ended up recoverying by going 4/4 on my next go.

But I did the PF tek guide, mostly to really understand what was going on and why this way worked better than that way etc. Plus it also gave me piece of mind that I wasn't growing anything dangerous in these jars. After I read through this thread:

A word about Contams - Contamination Forum - Shroomery Message Board

about "valley fever" I was like no way I'm I taking that chance. It just gives me peace of mind that there's no way nothing is wrong with my mushies. But I guess keep going with what's working for you.
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
Hmm, that's too bad you had to throw your first batch away, what happened there?
AchillesLast said:
A word about Contams - Contamination Forum - Shroomery Message Board

about "valley fever" I was like no way I'm I taking that chance. It just gives me peace of mind that there's no way nothing is wrong with my mushies. But I guess keep going with what's working for you.
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Valley Fever appears to be something you get from breathing in spores of a fungus that may not even be able to grow on food, and only releases spores after a rain in desert areas. You'd be just as likely to get it sniffing your leftovers to see if they're still good. And you can still get contamination no matter what method you use.

Besides, my cakes weren't contaminated. Two were initially, with mold, but I cut that part out before it could get much bigger than a pinhead. Plus, I've heard that if the mycella beats the contamination, the resulting mushrooms are ok, as long as there's not stuff growing on the mushrooms themselves.
 
cali-high

cali-high

Well-Known Member
very nice for realz you got a good yeild from just using brown rice flour LOL

i still cant believe it...i refuse to
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
cali-high said:
very nice for realz you got a good yeild from just using brown rice flour LOL

i still cant believe it...i refuse to
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Not rice flour, just plain old brown rice. :mrgreen:

I thought this would work based on my knowledge of biology, but mostly based on my extensive first-hand experience of the various means in which food spoils. ;)

I think regular brown rice is a better substrate for fungus because it has a lot of gaps between the grains that the mycella can move through, whereas flour produces a goo that can be hard for the filaments to penetrate. Also, bacteria would have a tougher time colonizing rice because they can't move through the gaps like fungi can.
 
AchillesLast

AchillesLast

Well-Known Member
Doctor Pot said:
I think regular brown rice is a better substrate for fungus because it has a lot of gaps between the grains that the mycella can move through, whereas flour produces a goo that can be hard for the filaments to penetrate. Also, bacteria would have a tougher time colonizing rice because they can't move through the gaps like fungi can.
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That's a good tip. I was going to try rye grain for that very reason actually. Plus I've heard rye makes for more potent mushrooms. I've also noticed that Brown Rice Flour creates a goo and mycella has a really hard time colonizing dense BRF regions.

Yeah, my first batch got lost to Lipstick mold. Really slow growing mold, which is why I had my fingers crossed the mycella would beat it out. But it ended up being that the cores of all my jars were more greatly infected then the visible out areas. So what I thought was getting beaten, was actually waging war inside my cake. I tossed them in the best interest of myself and others that may partake in my fruits. But my next batch is coming along very nicely. Check out my grow in my signature.
 
R

rollNfattys420

Well-Known Member
Could you provide any information towards questions i might have? :D


1. While growing- Stink like shit or what?
2. Doing it this way, is there any fungi that can be on it that's not visible? like other than what you seen?
3. How well do you trip on these shrooms?
4. You say in a few days i seen small shrooms, What was the total time it took to yield a oz of the shrooms?
5.Mason Jars are the same as the "salsa" jars?
6. Should they get a lot of sun/no sun? what... I wanna make my own shroomies!
 
bobharvey

bobharvey

Well-Known Member
Doctor Pot said:
Not rice flour, just plain old brown rice. :mrgreen:

I thought this would work based on my knowledge of biology, but mostly based on my extensive first-hand experience of the various means in which food spoils. ;)

I think regular brown rice is a better substrate for fungus because it has a lot of gaps between the grains that the mycella can move through, whereas flour produces a goo that can be hard for the filaments to penetrate. Also, bacteria would have a tougher time colonizing rice because they can't move through the gaps like fungi can.
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So could I just use brown rice and mix it in vermiculite?
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
rollNfattys420 said:
Could you provide any information towards questions i might have? :D


1. While growing- Stink like shit or what?
2. Doing it this way, is there any fungi that can be on it that's not visible? like other than what you seen?
3. How well do you trip on these shrooms?
4. You say in a few days i seen small shrooms, What was the total time it took to yield a oz of the shrooms?
5.Mason Jars are the same as the "salsa" jars?
6. Should they get a lot of sun/no sun? what... I wanna make my own shroomies!
Click to expand...
Mushrooms only have a faint smell (like regular eating mushrooms), unless of course they get infected, then they smell like garbage. Which is convenient, because that's where you'd be putting them.

All the molds that have grown in my rice have been on the surface, which leads me to believe that they were introduced after they were cooked. There was a bacillus contamination in a bigger jar that I started later, but the mycelia beat it back. If you want to avoid bacillus contamination, you can leave the rice soaking in water overnight, and the bacilli see all that rice and think it's party time, but then you cook it and they boil to death. :-P

I ate like ten grams of wet mushrooms which is about 1 gram dry. I had some faint closed eye visuals (oddly enough, of nazis. i had been watching the history channel while i waited for it to kick in) and I was definitely not ok to drive. I spent a lot of time staring at the grass in the back yard, talking to the plants in my garden, and thinking of various inanimate objects as my friends. I was more or less in control; I knew what I was doing was silly and nonsensical but enjoyed it nonetheless. :mrgreen:

Total time to get an ounce was about a month. And actually, it was more like five eighths of an ounce. Turns out the buggers weren't all the way done drying. There's still mushrooms coming up though, they're not done yet!

Salsa jars aren't ideal, I just had a lot of them lying around. The best jars would be ones where the mouth is as wide as the jar, that way you don't have to cut them in half in order to get them out. Even though I didn't use a lot of specialized stuff, I did make a good effort to be careful not to contaminate them. I didn't breathe on them or open them in a room where there was likely to be mold growing, (think kitchen!) for instance. Once the mycelia take over the top surface, they're a lot more resistant to contamination though.

They hardly need any light, they just don't like total darkness. I just put mine between my dresser and the wall, where the wastebasket used to be. There are other places I could put them, but I like looking at them. At the peak of their growing, you can notice their change in size every hour or so. :)

I also used cubensis B+ spores. I'm not sure if that makes a difference, but I've heard those are fairly easy to grow.

bobharvey said:
So could I just use brown rice and mix it in vermiculite?
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I'm not sure what the purpose of vermiculite is, since it adds no nutritional value. It must be either to hold water, or to create gaps for the mycelia to move through. Regular brown rice can do both of those things well enough, so I haven't been using vermiculite at all.
 
bobharvey

bobharvey

Well-Known Member
Do you leave them out in the light before they fully colonize or are you talking about when you're fruiting the cakes?
 
Capita

Capita

Well-Known Member
You are never ever suppose to use cakes that have been exposed to mold this is extremely dangerous the shrooms could be contamed and you could die. Also cakes that aren't 100% colonized should not be taken out because then other contams have a chance to colonize the uncover areas by the miclium. The purpose of the vermiculite is to supply water to you cakes for better bigger fruiting. You would have been able to dunk you cakes multiple times and get flushes from your cakes but now that there is no vermiculite your cakes will probably die after the first flush. ( A flush is when you pick all the shrooms off your cake then they grow back and you can even go up to a 3 flush if you dunk.)Vermiculite is very cheap as well. This is bad technique and i wouldn't recommend any one flowing it.
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
Capita said:
You are never ever suppose to use cakes that have been exposed to mold this is extremely dangerous the shrooms could be contamed and you could die. Also cakes that aren't 100% colonized should not be taken out because then other contams have a chance to colonize the uncover areas by the miclium. The purpose of the vermiculite is to supply water to you cakes for better bigger fruiting. You would have been able to dunk you cakes multiple times and get flushes from your cakes but now that there is no vermiculite your cakes will probably die after the first flush. ( A flush is when you pick all the shrooms off your cake then they grow back and you can even go up to a 3 flush if you dunk.)Vermiculite is very cheap as well. This is bad technique and i wouldn't recommend any one flowing it.
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I wouldn't recommend anyone flowing it either. Or at least not overflowing it. ;)

The mushrooms can become contaminated no matter how you do it, and no one's going to die from eating healthy-looking, normal-smelling cubensis mushrooms. And if you can't see or smell mold, it's not going to significantly affect your batch. I never said to take cakes that weren't 100% colonized out of the containers either. You should wait until they're ready and showing signs of tiny pinhead mushrooms.

Oh, and I have some water in the bottom of my container. During the fruiting stage, I had to add new water every day. Now they seem to be using a lot less though.
 
Capita

Capita

Well-Known Member
Like you said all mushrooms can be contaminated but your method increases the odds of this happening. There is a right and a wrong way of doing this and your guide is wrong. I an not insulting you but growing and eating your own shrooms puts you life at risk every time because of contams and this teck increases those chances and you are posting a teck that could incrase the chances of hurting someone.
 
Doctor Pot

Doctor Pot

Well-Known Member
Capita said:
Like you said all mushrooms can be contaminated but your method increases the odds of this happening. There is a right and a wrong way of doing this and your guide is wrong.
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You're wrong. There is not a right way and a wrong way. There are many ways, and some work better than others. The advantage of my way is that it is very cheap and easy. The disadvantage is that you're probably more susceptible to contamination if you're not careful.
I an not insulting you but growing and eating your own shrooms puts you life at risk every time because of contams and this teck increases those chances and you are posting a teck that could incrase the chances of hurting someone.
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I would suspect that eating shrooms from an unknown source is more dangerous than growing your own. And really, every time you go outside, you're technically risking your life. I mean, there could be anthrax spores out there! But you are right, I am increasing the chances of hurting someone. I mean, someone might do what I said, get a bunch of shrooms, eat them, trip hardcore, and try and cross the street during heavy traffic. So yeah, disregard everything I said. Just say no to drugs! ;)
 
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