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What makes the grow block "spent"? I know when you're fruiting, the spawn is allowed to completely grow through the medium, but after you collect the mushrooms couldn't you move that spawn to some fresh medium and start a new fruiting bag? Or does the mycelium sort of get worn out after fruiting?
Without more food, the mycelium is limited to how many flushes of mushrooms it grows. Once it barely fruits, it’s considered spent.
You can add the mycelium to new growing medium and that will give it more energy to fruit, but it’s not infinite as you run into senescence.
Had to look up that word, but ok that makes sense and explains why eventually you have to start new spawn from a fresh mushroom. I got some pink and blue oyster spawn from ebay and have been expanding it between jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels, so I now have several jars ready to go to fruiting bags. I'm hoping to get a couple bags started this weekend, and maybe put the other jars in the refrigerator to slow them down until I'm ready to start some new fruiting bags. This is my first attempt at growing them so I've been trying to figure it all out as I go.
Figuring out as you go is precisely how I’ve learned and it’s so much more rewarding. It really shows you how fantastic these life forms are and how we as humans don’t know shit about fuck.
Post some pics if you can of your grow! I’d be excited to see them and get some mushroom envy since I haven’t been growing for over a year now.
I did add some new posts in this group over the last few weeks about my grain jars and an experiment with button mushrooms that failed. My spawn jars are completely full now, and look like white puffy cotton. I did a shake&break when they looked to be about 40% colonized and otherwise just left them alone to grow. The popcorn took a little longer to get started but then quickly caught up to the rye jars so I'm thinking both methods are working equally well so far.
For fruiting, I got some bags off ebay, and I have chopped straw and lime ready to do a cold water bath... oh and that reminds me, I guess I need to soak the straw overnight so I need to do the bath the day before I'm ready to set up the bags. And I still don't know yet where I'm going to hang the bags that will be out of the way. Maybe I can find some room in the garage.
Damn that’s quite the operation!
Funny, I thought I was doing it the easy way. 😄 The initial spawn from ebay was only 10g each, a much smaller amount that I thought I was getting, but it was strong so I pressure-cooked some grain jars, built a still-air box, and let them start growing out. Only one of those jars had a problem but the mycelium seems to be winning.
Same with the lime bath for the straw... that just seemed like the easiest method to get started, I don't really have a way to boil that amount of straw, but I can do the bath in an old plastic barrel I have. I think I'm going to try starting with two bags of blue oysters and one bag of pink oysters, and see how that goes. I still need to read up on drying the harvest but I do have a food dehumidifier... unless I end up eating everything as fast as I grow it! I do love mushrooms.
Wouldn’t you only need to do the cold water lime pasteurization, forgoing the need for boiling the straw?
Right, only one method is needed. I see people setting up burners outside to sterilize the straw, but the lime method also is supposed to work well and doesn't require all that energy to boil the water.
Ya I recommend trying the least effort method first 😀