Tips for the Successful Outdoor Cultivation of Mushrooms!

[xShiva.spacetechnology]

Hey, does anyone have tips for the outdoor cultivation of mushrooms?? (species name may or may not sound like D. Tube? ;) )

anyways this species are found in the wild in dung..and my foreign correspondent claims to have to have some cakes that have already produced in an artificial setup, and wants to try cultivate these shrooms outdoors (they lives in an area that has these same mushrooms growing wild).

So anyone with any tips or stories of previous attempts (succesful and fuck-ups) on growing these outdoors, or links to helpful sites, all help is appreciated.

Thankyou

Edited September 28, 2007 by xshivaspacetechnologyx

[nothinghead]

Great thread on this here

[gerbil]

Shallow dig a square or whatever shape, spawn into pasteurised manure and straw.

Alternatively fully colonise manure/straw 'logs' of polyethylene tubing and then shallow bury them.

Alternatively colonise a substrate like the above logs and use that to spawn more manure and straw in the outdoor bed. (this is probably a better option IMO even though it's an extra step)

If spawning outdoors try and avoid/minimise grain content, which is difficult, or make sure you fence off the growing area else rats etc. dig it all up very quickly. Even if you colonise bulk substrate indoors (spawned with grain) then spawn outdoors later on after some digestion the grains are still present and the rats will dig it up generally.

AHHH the rain last night and today has brought out another flush of vege patch king oysters mmm. The rats/rodents/possums? previously dug the hell out of these and lost most of my crop, but every now and then with some rain it's a nice surprise...these 'logs' were from an indoor grow that flushed 2-3 times and were shallow buried in the vege patch, have flushed 2-3 more times.

Cover the outdoor bed with hessian or some plastic sheeting or something similar so it doesn't dry out, air it and water it when appropriate.

I think you'd be very interested in Mycelium Running by Stamets, the outdoor grow he undertakes of a certain species would interest you no doubt.

Animals and humidity fluctuations would probably be of most concern, contam less so if you've got a healthy culture but still something to consider.

An interesting possibility is to use a greenhouse like those 20$ 2 tier bunnings ones, shallow bury that into the soil and spawn within the dug out lower section, that can potentially keep good humidity, good temp, whilst keeping animals out. I've just dumped one over the 2 flushes of king oysters in the vege patch so I actually get to eat them this time instead of the wildlife.

too scared of slugs, harvested early.

I'm going to trial a method this summer using PE ducting and past. bulk substrate outdoors in a vege patch with only the bottom of the substrate in contact with the earth.

Essentially a length of PE ducting is cut to a length that allows a certain portion to be dug into the soil, and the above ground part being the fruiting chamber. A circular hole is dug to the diameter of the inflated ducting, the ducting inserted so the sides are flush with the soil and only the base is exposed to dirt, bulk substrate is layered with spawn until the top of the soil where a casing layer will be placed, either processed or just straw, the ducting should rise to an appreciable degree so that large mushrooms can form and then tied off loosely to allow air exchange but at the same time create a humidity dome. I reckon this will work very well and in my situation it is handy due to the constant dry and dry winds, PE ducting in this situation could be recycled into direct use again so a small piece can potentially go a long way which avoids having to rely of using heaps of plastic.

A downside is that the mycelium generally won't be in contact with the soil and therefore not forming associations with the vegetatables, but post fruiting the ducting is easily removed and contact for decomposition or possibly more myc growth (and no doubt at leas some fruitings) and association formation can occur.

Edited September 29, 2007 by gerbil