The spawn run has begun - Cultivating mushrooms

It has been around two weeks since I inoculated these jars full of wild bird seed with Pink Oyster mushroom spawn. There are visible changes happening to the glass containers, a silky white hair like structure is completely running over all of the seeds inside and will go deep into the center of the jars until nothing is uncolonized. It was a lot of fun doing this project, even with all the cleaning required to keep the jars from competing fungi moving in. You can read about the basics of the process in my post below.

https://peakd.com/hive-163521/@solominer/cultivating-mushrooms-building-a-still-air-box-and-doing-a-g2g-transfer

My previous post on this project:

By just using mason jars, bird seed bought at the local market and some good mushroom spawn you can also grow these. As long as you have a sterile environment to transfer the fungi to the grains in the jars.

For the first week I did not see much change, besides shaking the jars all I could do is wait.

But now we can see a clear line where the mushroom mycelium has run down the jar feeding on the wild birdseed as it spawns.

Seems like these jars are pretty clean. I am not seeing any slime form at the bottom or any unknown fungi taking over before the Pink Oyster mycelium gets a chance.

I think it helped to have a brand new still air box, in my experience the more times you prep with it eventually it will grow stuff in it you cannot remove. But for now I got around 40 good jars and 8 bad ones.. bad ones just being no progress.. Will show that later in the post.

Every jar is at a different stage in the spawn run, some are completely colonized others are half way or quarter way through.

It even seems one started growing through its vent hole.. hah

I can see a few others trying to do the same.. grow down not up silly fungi!

Seems like its happy so I will just leave that little piece, if it fruits there it would be hilarious.

I realized that breaking big chunks off and putting them in the jars is not ideal. It indeed causing them to fruit and not run through the jar with fresh mycelium.

The trick is to crush up the mycelium block pieces before putting them in the jar.

With a few close ups we can see where the mycelium has spawned and where it has left.

Some spots I can barely see the grain its so far spawned.. I expect the jars to turn completely white in mycelium before they are done. Like my block of mushroom kit. At that point it is basically what I have.. or around 40 of them.. haha

Some of the chunks fruited at the top of the jar and stuck to the inside, making these weird looking structures.

Honestly I was worried the cold room temperatures were going to affect their growth. Being a warm loving fungi, my room they were in is around 60-70f and probably not ideal.

The failed jars

Some from heat, others I did not break down the mushroom block good enough.
Some from heat, others I did not break down the mushroom block good enough.

This tangela looking thing is a piece of mycelium broke off and put in the jar. It would seem it prefers to fruit instead of growing bigger.

A few chunks are doing nothing at all, maybe I cooked them putting them in too hot jars.

We can see the chunk but not much mycelium growth around it. If it does not grow soon, something else will take over the jar and the Pink Oyster mycelium will lose its opportunity to grow.

40 jars are forming mycelium

We can see some of the micro pore tape used, along with the synthetic filter discs.

We can see some of the micro pore tape used, along the glue on filters.

Now we wait with all my jars and let the mycelium run all the way down and then through the center of the wild bird seed jars.

I have been testing the jars and even the kit for co2, I have yet to detect higher levels. So we shall see if this project actually produces the co2 I need, otherwise it will just be fun to grow the mushrooms and eat them.

Posted with STEMGeeks