Cool weather edibles again, syringe revival

[gerbil]

Over the last couple of months I revived some mycelial syringes from FF, my experience with them has been nothing but top quality.

I've tried to track the specific invoice but can only find ones with other physical tools that if I remember correctly were ordered around the same time. Going by these, the syringes i've estimated at around 2 years old and have generally spent their life in the fridge in the vegetable crisper section.

From time to time these syringes were taken out of the fridge and possibly one to a few CC of mycelial solution was utilised and then went back into storage in the fridge.

So they were in the fridge for 2 years, FF gives a 30 day usage time for returns (From memory, don't quote me!). They were removed recently and let sit at room temperature for 24+hours and then used to inoculate grain jars.

Both P. eryngii and P. ostreatus lept off significantly, especially the eryngii, and the mycelium was thick, glossy/silky, vigorous and to the eye looked really healthy, it was in all honesty a pleasure to gaze at the silky sort of rhizomorphic eryngii mycelium, bliss!.

So anyway, the ostreatus grain once colonised was used to inoculate a straw/bran/paper oven bag (Oh and I also revived and did up a H. ulmarius bag). This was a bit of a failure, I was too generous with the water and the mycelium only colonised half of the bag, leaving the rest (still with grain through it) to sit stagnant and I expected contam to set in within the week. Left it for a few weeks and nothing happened, then over a period of 2 days the ostreatus ripped through the bag with thick leading silky mycelium, colonised and started to fruit like mad. The H. ulmarius is still stuggling with the water issue and I don't expect too much from it, but if need be it's easy to isolate back to agar from the colonised bits.

The eryngii was lovely, grain masters inoculating more grain jars were showing significant signs of recovery in as little as 9 hours, and if slightly over inoculated, the jars would colonise at a minimum of about 2 days, this made things hectic as it's alot of work keeping on top of all transfers. Over about a month, heaps of PE logs of Bran/paper/straw/gypsum/lime (Maybe some variations here or there) were made up, they colonised quickly and within the last week, the weather has made them pin like crazy, I didn't get on top of casing them quick enough so all sides/tops/bottoms are fruiting. At the moment I'm leaving them uncased, but will case some eventually, or maybe not.

My reason for this post? I mainly wanted to show how strong good cultures are (i.e. FunkyFungus) and that they can be stored for quite significant periods of time in the fridge with no maintenance. Keep in mind these are cool weather species. I think these mushrooms and the huge diversity of known and unknown edible fungi have significant ethnobotanical potential and significance.

My plan for this season was to make up a large outdoor bed of carrots and eryngii trench plantings in between. At the moment I don't know if this will be achieved as I misinterpret time too frequently, but hopefully something, even if it's small will be trialled. Also wanting to trial interplanting with asian greens, to try and pull off a good supply of mushroom, carrot and asian greens. Water restrictions are making the vege patch projects/timings etc more difficult.

Anyway enough rambling, here are some early pictures, the season has begun, it's alot of work but still very exciting.

This picture backs up my experience as well as revs experience / comments on how contam resistant P. eryngii is. This agar fell on the glovebox floor so was not used in grain transfer, I repeatedly exposed it to outside conditions and left it in my room with dust around it etc. After a few weeks+, NO contam, just myc growth and it started to fruit.

P. eryngii...Bags starting to pin like mad, it's hard to keep on top of things it's so quick at times.

P. ostreatus (My plan was to drop this culture as the common oyster seemed to eventually give me some nice vomiting etc around 4-5 hours after the meal on multiple occasions, but they are fun to grow, my folks didn't get any negative reaction at all)

P. ostreatus

Will update as things progress/interesting bits and pieces arise.

Edited April 17, 2007 by gerbil

[ENtiTY]

Awesome edibles Gerb

Need to see more of these on the forum!

I'm going to chase me down some oysters now

What type of agar do you use for the oysters Gerb?

[gerbil]

I need to branch out hehe people will be getting sick of seeing the eryngii and ostreatus under similar techs next is wild Trametes versicolor when I find a specimen which should be more interesting, plus i'm hoping to find this funky velvety polypore I found years ago and didn't collect, ID it and get it in culture cause it'll be interesting somehow

Am mixing and using light malt extract, yeast, agar and generally some h202 before plating. Have only really ever used this and had very good results.

[ENtiTY]

Pretty much the same Agar I use except I use vegemite instead of yeast. I find it works well as well

Look forward to seeing some pics of the polypore and trametes

[Rev]

nice work

what a dry autumn it is

ionly thing recently to fruit is pleurotus tuber-regium under my tangelo tree