lindsay

Nice, well done. the peastraw would start fermenting very quickly too. fried oyters and onions, tossed in hokkien noddles with soy source, mmmmm.

how does facebook know u are a fake. are they checking up on you. I don't do facebook, but my advice is dump them. stick to emails for real friends and family and join forums for like minded people.

anyone here know were I could source spiral dowels from? looking for a 1000 or so.

3rd flush is looking to be as good as the others. will pick tonight. should be close to the last pickings in weight. I think I will go a 4th round. update: 1.5 kg picked

great time of the year here for outdoor grows. looking forward to a week of 20 C average temps. so the timing for a blue oyster basket is looking good. doing this one with a high spawn rate of 6 ltrs. the jars don't look fully colonized, but several days before they were fully white. I had to give them a shake to buy some time till I go around to pasteurizing and spawning the straw. fitting nice in the fridge incubator. 5 days later looking 90% done.

I am thinking of making a jig, to drop say 6 or so dowels in and then drilling a hole through the side of the dowels at top 1/3 to meet the cambium layer. maybe several holes?

just pm the dowel supply site to you Waterboy . there supply looks low so I didn't post here, its first in best dressed. post here, if there is any left after you buy. 20 bucks seems a good price. this will be the first time using dowels. I got access to a heap of poplars between 6-10 inches dia. so I am having a crack at it with a few species.

importing wood dowels would have customs jumping up and down, and treatment would mean chemicals. I think I will go with fluted dowels. I am looking at some Tasmanian oak, 500 for 20 bucks. cheers everyone.

a little less stem, but more cutting to harvest. not complaining though. the third crop is happening. a good even pinning all over the basket top to bottom. plenty of small pining groups and single pins, giving plenty of light between them. should give less stem again. and the light intensity is a little higher now than at the start. the temps forecasted the next 3 days are 25, 27 to 31c. looking forward to see how they perform.

here is the 2nd crop picked 2 days back, its more evenly spread. the mushrooms were just a little smaller. the first pick weighed 2.5kg, this pick was just 5 grams less. so 5kg off the basket so far. I will give it a good soak tonight and see what I can push out for the final crop.

most of the reishi in sawdust blocks were climbing up the sides of the bags. there was a lot of condensation in side the bag, that caused this I think. when I cut the bags down to the substrate level for fruiting, I cut back the mycelium as well. some were several inches above the sub. a lot of the fruiting came from these cut sites. other blocks that were not climbing up the walls I just waited until the top surface looked a little raised or bumpy. different strains may behave differently, I can only speak from what I have learnt from this one. if they look fully done I would try starting one bag first. if it gets good warmth you should see it start bubbling up in 2-4 days. keeping the humidity really high or keeping the surface wet with a hand mister works well. I use the water from the hot water tap before it gets hot because I am on rain water. reishi is so resistant to contaminants anyway it almost bullet prof.

only done the lime soak for oysters. actually a lime shower, but the 12v pump I was using died. i should get it going again. would bring energy cost down.

I put a cup full of lime to every 50ltrs of pasteurisation water. hydrated lime or builders lime, the cement Australia brand is the cheapest and easiest to find. it has a low magnesium content of 0.5-1.0% and for a round 10 dollars a 30ltr bag. it is the high mag that will stunt mushrooms this is why many don't recommend builders lime.

Shrooman almost missed your your Q. yes its 100% straw (pasteurized) , but inculcated with 50/50 sawdust and grain spawn. this method is fantastic for growing massive king oysters. picked a 195gm king a few days back.

good question. it is said that the best reishi comes from Duan wood grown reishi. how much better? would be nice to know. polysaccharides and triterpenes would be still present, in the straw grow reishi I believe. the mushroom is still growing off lignin and plant sugars. in what amount are these medical properties present I have no clue . mushrooms grown on strait grain, I have read, don't have the full medical properties. this could be expected, grain being so far from being the natural food source, unless its a smut. eg cordyceps mushrooms grow on rice doesn't produce cordycepin unless it has a particular protein that is contained in its host, usually a insect or its larvae. does the speed of growth, effect the medical properties of a mushroom or is it just the substrate its grown on ? you can grow some really good pot in just 6 weeks or can you get better if grown slower?

reishi on straw? I am very much leaning towards growing reishi this way so far. easier harvesting ( one cut to remove from the substrate) and processing. from grow room to the dehydrator in less than 30 min. it would have taken 3x as long to havest this amount from sawdust blocks.

reishi grown on straw seems to work ok.

did not get a even pinning, most happen all around the bottom. dam wind took the plastic of and dried the top off when I was at work. but still a good crop. looks like dinner.

I was glad to see the end of the last reishi grow. it was looking like a red dust storm had blown through the grow room, with all the spores covering everything. these are the last of fruits ready to be sliced for drying. go 2 little experiments happening. reishi on straw and reishi on un-supplemented sawdust blocks. here are the straw logs. inoculated with 50/50 sawdust and grain spawn. when the filter patches started to bulge, I just tore them off.

basket has 10 or more sets of pins happening now.

two rules of mycelium engagement. 1. always mark cultures as transfers are made. 2 .always grow out cultures from others, before sharing. (just in case rule 1 was ignored by them).

yep, I hear an eco here on the mycology forum, Fungi1963. Growing mushroom is a real time bandit. I am always trying to make thing easier faster or as you say, getting things to happen when time is available. the timing of spawn I think I am just about on top of. I've been keeping records of each of the cultures I have. what temps they are incubated at, when they are shaken and when they are done. so next time round I should know about what day things need to happen. hey Fungi1963, better to be trying to find time, than to be trying to find something do with your time. will tipping the freezer on its side work better for you? Darklight the basket is about 50 ltrs. The straw i buy it by the bale. i chop it with a paper guillotine which takes about an hour. it is, a slow way of doing it.

after wrecking my waterproof 5050 led strips, by using white vinegar in the grow room after a grow. I decided to go a brighter led, that is a 5630 led strip. the 5050 led's are 5 Amps per 5 mtr and the 5630's are 6 Amps per 5 mtr. they arrived today, so I tested both under a lux meter and wow. at 5.5 inches away, the 5630's were almost 2x as bright, 1150 lux compared to 600 lux for the 5050's. then I let both led's run for a bit and tested with a IR thermometer and the 5630's operated cooler by about 20%. this time I am going to mount to $3.50 per mtr 12mm dia alum tubing and cover with a $1 per mtr pvc heat shrink. this extra investment I a hope will give me the 50,000 hrs these leds are rated at, and give me the advantage of running water through the alum tubes via a 12v pump when things start to warm up again.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/29-5FT-Clear-20MM-Heat-Shrink-Tube-Tubing-9Meter-2-1-50-shrinkage-ratio-/121149268686?pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item1c350f22ce

yep I was blown away when first looked in on it. I had to look back to the dates on my picks, I thought I was going silly or something. the high spawn rate is what has done it. if your looking for an old fridge NSF, advertise in gumtree and offer $20 for them to deliver. its better than them paying to dispose off it. i had a dozen calls before I could pull down the advert. the older the fridge the stronger the shelves, I have found.