Alternative spawn medium

[Zen Peddler]

Im having heaps of trouble with any type of grawn spawn medium. Even if its a solid block of sawdust with a tiny ratio of millet or grain we have these field mice in the yard that just massacre them. Two large and deep buried blocks were destroyed, about ten trays of experimental grows of Lepista nuda and others were also massacred by the little pricks.

I tried rye grass seed but its much more expensive.

Anyone else got any ideas? maybe ill just go with a flour mixed with the sawdust?

[Sallubrious]

That must be a pain in the arse. I suppose screening them off with a fine wire mesh would be impractical.

I've never tried it with edible wood growing mushrooms but maybe a BRF mix spawned onto a coco peat substrate supplemented with woodchips or sawdust could work. It wouldn't have any whole grains at all that way.

[waterboy 2.0]

I think it may be time to wage rodent war...take no prisoners

[Zen Peddler]

We haev a bit of a plague at the moment - we had nine in our house last month

[lindsay]

you could cover the ground with bird wire.

or there is a old biodynamic recipe I read about long time ago.

first you catch some mice

skin them (dead mice)

burn the skins

mix the ash with sand to make easy spreading

spread around the borders of the grain crop.

apparently the mice think the crop has been burnt and don't go there?

[waterboy 2.0]

yeap trap/poison/shoot mice, cut their ears off and make necklace....keep adding as you dispatch them...lol

you'll either kill them all or they will think you are Rambo and give your kingdom a wide berth.

Can't say I've skun a mouse before...lol

This alginate based spawn concept may be of interest though Zen (it got me thinking now I've found it...lol):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16348774

Mice probably would still want to munch it down though.

[Berengar]

Perlite mixed with wheat bran, around 50/50 ratio, is a fine spawn medium, it is often used, especially for outdoor grows. I'm not sure if the bran would also attract mice, but it's worth a try.

[Zen Peddler]

Interesting idea. thanks

[Zen Peddler]

millet is clearly the mice's dream.

[incognito]

Tie a cat to stake near your plot,

With a bowl of water with a bit of ice mixed in.

Edited April 20, 2014 by incognito

[naja naja]

u could put some colonized grain at the bottom of a jar, put ur saw dust on top, let it colonize, then use the colonized saw dust to span larger amounts of saw dust?

[Bigred]

What about adding chilli or pepper to the next one maybe that might deter them

[Zen Peddler]

Haha. I'm going ok with rye grass seed for now.