shiitake

[squiresk]

Anyone here grow these?

I wouldn't mind having a bash at it.

I have access to Oak/hardwood sawdust and an autoclave.

I've had some experience in growing other mushrooms and found the 'whole' experience very enjoyable.

Is it possible to inoculate a sawdust block using a sporeprint taken from 'supermarket' shiitake. Do they drop spores? If not, or this isn't practicle, does anyone how spores or sporewater, or even mycelium I could buy?

I was gonna make a sawdust block from Oak, + 5-10% BRF, 1-2% sugar, stabilise the hunidity using a layer or vermiculite.

Fruit it in an very clean fishtank, with water (+H2O2) soaked perlite.

I noticed lighting somewhere. Is this important? Also how do you shock them, initiate the first flush, put them into light and the cold?

How agressive is the mycelium, how quick are the fruiting. I'm patient, but wouldn't wait a year for fruit from logs!

How does this sound?

l8r kai.

Oh, reville, if your reading this, how are your cordyceps coming along?

[spiders]

Most of what ive read about shiitake mushrooms is BS. here mycelia is quite aggressive - colonised 1 litre blocks of oak sawdust, chips and brf in three weeks from innoculation. Once birthed, i let them sit for a month then let them sit in water as Stamets suggested for 24 hours. This made some of the blocks fall apart. After a period where the mycelia turns brown in many places, they finally began to develop primordia recentally. The original culture being used was a store mushroom cloned by Reville. I grew these indoors in a standard cubensis fruiting chamber, but i found that the humidity did not suit the shiitake = it was too high, so i have to get people to fan it all the time during the day when i am not home. This helps lower the rH

The best method would be to get a culture fo Reville or myself or clone your own from the supermarket - ive never germinated their spores and i do have a spore print of Stamets' warm weather shittake here. I have a few different shiitake varieties here now

[Guest reville]

Anyone here grow these?

I have access to Oak/hardwood sawdust and an autoclave.

Is it possible to inoculate a sawdust block using a sporeprint taken from 'supermarket' shiitake. Do they drop spores? If not, or this isn't practicle, does anyone how spores or sporewater, or even mycelium I could buy?

youll need a culture.refridgerated shrooms rarely drop spores

I was gonna make a sawdust block from Oak, + 5-10% BRF, 1-2% sugar, stabilise the hunidity using a layer or vermiculite.

sugar is uneccesary, even detrimental replace with gypsum.Also vermiculite is unecessary

Fruit it in an very clean fishtank, with water (+H2O2) soaked perlite.

dont forget to cold shock and if nmecessary soak in water for 24 hours to hydrate properly

lights not really an issue with shiitake but can be detrimental to the mycelium while colonising

shiitake can be very vigorous

you have to wait till its ready to fruit - usually cold and moisture but the blocks can be done in 3 weeks

logs are agreat option as theyre easy to mnage (soak and strike mehod)

a good strain and high innoc rate and theyll be done in 6 months and can go 3 - 6 years.use hardwoods likwe oak or liquidambar.

bluegum also works well

Oh, reville, if your reading this, how are your cordyceps coming along?

no show so far.i havent given up on it yet though

[Guest reville]

Also other eucalypts are good too - at least the sawdust is - even jarrah supports shiitake, jarrah is usually quite anti-fungal cos of the phenols? i guess its OK because oak has plenty of tannins and phenols too.

[squiresk]

"youll need a culture.refridgerated shrooms rarely drop spores"

I'm trying just one cap at the moment, if I have no luck, could I pester you for some inoculum.

I was intending to cold shock them.

And yeah, I'd forgotten about the Gypsum. What is this for? pH buffering or do they require the Ca or sulphate? Would lime or chalk work? Any ideas

"soak in water" and "Once birthed, i let them sit for a month then let them sit in water as Stamets suggested for 24 hours"

Really, I always thought direct moisture was bad. Doesn't this 'yellow' the mycelium.

I assume you just sit the block in (Sterilised) water to let the whole thing soak up water, rather than the humidity providing the mushrooms water needs. (From what bluemeanie says)

I just assumed the lights would be an additional shocking mechanism.

I may try an oak/eucalypt mixture. How much does the substrate influence the taste.

anyway, thanks for the help so far.

I think I'll be taking photos of the whole process, (if it works.)

[This message has been edited by squiresk (edited 24 July 2002).]

[This message has been edited by squiresk (edited 24 July 2002).]

[Ed Dunkel]

I just recently drilled a hole on an oak stump and hammered some inoculated wood dowls into it. See if it colonises the wood stump with Shiitake.

I got the shiitake from the ones you get at Coles, under sterile conditions opened up the centre of the mushroom stem and with sterile tweezers pulled a bit of mycelium from out of the mushroom stem.

Placed it on a petri dish with agar and waited for it to colonise.

After it colonised I make a syringe from the colonised agar and sprayed some of it on some boiled sterilised wood dowls (with vermiculite) in a nutela jar and waited for it to colonise.

In no time it had colonised the dowls and they are ready for plugging.

I'll tell ya if it worked in several months time.

E D

[squiresk]

E.D.

Good luck.

So what I gather is:

The stalk of a mushroom can grow like mycelium. I don't think I understand. Does the centre of the mushroom stalk, at the bottom of the stalk, placed on agar actually grow. You sure it was Shiitake, definatley not just another mold or anything? How close do you think the stalk was from the mycelium? Did the mushroom have a base, or remnants of the mycelium? Coz, the ones I've seen/bought have just been cut (across the stalk).

I'll be having a closer look now though, cheers.

Kai.

Reville, I noticed on you myco supply site that you don't have any spores, just consumables. Are you intending to sell such items, like inoculum?

l8r k.

[spiders]

The entire mushroom fruit is made up of mycelia so any part of it can be cloned. By obtaining a piece from inside the mushroom fruit, the material is more likely to be sterile - or less likely to contaminate.

[squiresk]

Thanks a lot.

You learn something new every day.

k.

[Guest reville]

Originally posted by squiresk:

Its probably better to isolate your own from a bought mushroom . My cultures are $25 each.

What i can help you with though are these great antibiotic slants i have, also empty petri dishes for making peroxide agar

It might make it alot easier to clone those store bought shrooms

from button and portobello,shiitake,enoki,oyster,abalone woodear,even the wierd jelly fungus.

Ive also found them gerat for trips away and have clned sevaeral wild shrooms successfuly

if oure interested ontac me at [email protected]

And yeah, I'd forgotten about the Gypsum. What is this for? pH buffering or do they require the Ca or sulphate? Would lime or chalk work? Any ideas

yes.yes and yes.Partialy and partially.

The shrooms need all those things pH buffer, Ca and SO4 for a healthy metabolism.

Lime and limestone give 2 out of 3 but not the sulphate which is why ive always used it in preference for blocks

I always thought direct moisture was bad. Doesn't this 'yellow' the mycelium.

You are thinking in vitro.In this case things get anaeobic and exudates accumulate poisoning the mycelium. With blocks there is airflow.This keeps it fresh but also dehydrates the block in addition to what goes into the shrooms.For the second flush youll need to soak to rehydrate.Becaus eits only 24 - 36 h theres no damage to the mycelium and becaue they are bare blocks the water doesnt sit around .

Also shiitake doesnt form pins in a casing laye that re likely to be drowned, rather it form an exterior skin and the shroom erupt forth when there is enough moisture

I assume you just sit the block in (Sterilised) water to let the whole thing soak up water, rather than the humidity providing the mushrooms water needs. (From what bluemeanie says)

in water - doesnt have to be sterilised. once the block is colonised there is little danger in contam as long as the conditions favout healthy mushroom mycelia. things like High CO2 low O2 or unfavourable temps harm mycelium and contams like trichoderma can get in other wise should be OK.

After the first flush you can soak in tap water with a little bleach added - this weak beach helps rid the surface of any mould that may be trying to get a foothold. it doesnt affect the mycelium or shrooms at all.this works for any cake or block

perliet wont add moisture but by keeping the rh up it slows loss allowingtime for the shrooms to develop. after harvest give a weeks rest before soaking again

I just assumed the lights would be an additional shocking mechanism.

definitely useful but not the prime driver in shiitake. it is or oysters and shimeji

I may try an oak/eucalypt mixture. How much does the substrate influence the taste.

not as much as it seems to influence colour and yield ive found. for example ive eaten shimeji off newspaper, straw, alder logs and pine shaving blocks and though the yield and colour varied the taste was pretty much the same.One thing though - the medicinal qualities of the shroom may be different if grown on a log vs a block because of the time and digestion of complex substances - or so some chinese herbalists maintain anyway

You cant beat logs and straw for the home grower all round.

anyway, thanks for the help so far.

I think I'll be taking photos of the whole process, (if it works.)

look forward to it

[This message has been edited by squiresk (edited 24 July 2002).]

[This message has been edited by squiresk (edited 24 July 2002).]

[squiresk]

Thanks for your reply and help Rev.

About a week ago a made an agar plate with some Oyster mushroom.

Firstly, this is jsut plain Nutrient Agar, but I know it does grow everything, molds, bacteria etc.. No inhibtion. But it doesn't have a lignin or cellulose component. I could make some agar with added wood/paper pulp for next time, but anyway..

In this picture

http://hometown.aol.com/sqrskai/myhomepage/photo.html

you see the results.

The dish on the left, on first impressions looks like a mold, but there is radial lines from the mushroom tissue. I dunno, but I think it is mycelium.

The one on the right is totally different, just a small um, blob of white mycelium?

They are both identical, no obvious contamaination, same agar, same time, incubated exactly the same, any ideas?

One other thing, where do you guys get syringes from?

l8r Kai.

[Guest reville]

Well the overgrown on looks bad. Thats def contam you can tell by the colour and also the speed.

If you dont have antibiotics I recommend isolating onto water agar - water and agar

no nutrients.

The mushroom tissue will have enough reserves to reach out into the agar looking for foo while the contams wot be able to establish easily

That first one is a dead loss. Its quite hard to isolate shrooms from mould as the antibiotics that affect mould also inhibit shrooms.

The second one looks clean but 'confused'

I really dfont know why they do this but some isolates just sit there like that fow a while. It may have something to do with the change in media. You ahve two options - subculture it and sometimes this shocks them into activity or ditch it and try again.

Before moving on i have to say that when you reisolate from storage some strains grow very anaemically acros the firts plate. This must be something to do with the loss of vigour during storage. However by the time you sub it it has usually digested enough substrate to have recovered and regains its normal characteristics.

Some agars and species dont agree with each other. For example Shiitake on MMN groes very slowly and excretes large amounts of pigment, whereas Shiitake on PDA or MYA is a dense white carpet.

MYA is great for healthy cultures but bad for the same reason for isolataion - the contam rate is higher.

For Spores and islation id recommend PDA or Cornmeal agar CMA.

Id suggest tryng to islate again and looking for a sub that shows immediate vigour.

I split the shrooma nd do abou five subs per plate (tiny tiny pieces of tissue). Keep an eye on them some will show cotam but others wont. The first ones that show a nice fuzzy ring of growth around it you can remove and put onto its own plate.

Let these grow until you are sure that they the right species.

With oysters on PDA the mycelium should be white and loose and linear with a slight anise smell.

It is realtively fast growing.

[Noveltea]

.int