Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Novaris - what sort of sawdust did you use for your cakes. In america they often use the pellets sold for wood burners. They are now starting to become available in Aus - but the ones here seem to use unsuitable wood (ie mainly pine).

Not really they seemed more interested in commercial log based growing. Therefore they would recommend getting spawn plugs from a reliable source, the problem with spore is that they are genetically different the children may or may not have the same quality as the parent. As veggie boy said if you take a cut from inside the body of a mushroom you can grow in agar the mycelium and start a new genetically identical batch.

I just got some hardwood from a hardwood specialist mill near us, not totally sure of its makeup. The logs I used were oak, but at the course they told us that sugar gum works almost as well. The main thing seems to be the quality of the bark, it seems to need to be thick enough to retain moisture and not too hard to restrict the growth. They also said that fast growing sapwood is what is required, thats why they take the logs in late spring the sapwood is full of sugars.

I have just started to soak the ones on sawdust at the moment. Two of the four are good they have completly encased the sawdust and made a good plug, one is about 3/4 formed and one less than half. The two poorer ones appeared to be dying back that's why I decided to do them now. I will let you know how they go.

BRB the usual way to store shiitake is dried apparently they actually taste better after drying.

Finding a locally plentiful timber would seem to be an important aspect for growing on logs. Bill - you would seem to have no issues there.

Novaris - interesting to hear what you say about sugar gum. While this is mainly a souther eucalyptus variety I think (not sure we have ot here much), it stands to reason that other eucalyptus may be equaly usable. Might just be a matter of trial and error. I'd be happy if I could grow of the aucalyptus we have here as I will often have a need to cut off limbs from the neighbours trees that overhang my fences and may as well put them to use .

I'd be interested to see if they would grow on the common wattle gum wood as this is another tree that I have to cut down before it finishes its relatively short (in tree terms) lifecycle (borers normally get them at about 7 years) in my experience.

Other mediums that might be used if you can get cheap or free would be nut shells like pecan or walnut crunched into small pieces. I hear of lots of people using cotton seed hulls.
Mornings mentioned growing shiitakes on oak and oysters on poplar, I'm curious if the type wood effects the flavor, or just works best for growing. I wouldn't think it would to the extent that it does when smoking meat, but I don't know. Lots of tricks to good cooking, winemaking etc. I may be loosing some of it's flavor potential if I use just any ole woody material.

veggie boy if gravillea robusta (silky oak) grow where you are you might give them a try, I spoke to Rowan at the course about them and he agreed they are fast growing and have bark similar to oak. In fact he was surprised he had not thought to try them as he grows plantations on his property.

BRB as I understand it shiitake grown on logs are quite different to those on sawdust and other media, the log ones are thicker stemmed and are supposed to have superior flavour, they might also have higher medicinal value but this is not certain. There has not been any mention that the quality of shiitake was very different on the different logs just the yield is greater on some tree than others.

Silky oak does grow in Queensland but I wouldn't say it is readily available. I have one small tree at the back of my place and conditions are such that it has not grown quickly at all. I did have two - but cut the other down and used it when making my chook perches (that one was probably only 50mm thick at the trunk).

Although I am on a larger than suburban block, no room for growing trees for this purpose.

Getting to know a tree removal person would be ideal in this hobby as they would be chopping down and mulching suitable wood all the time from which some logs could be saved.

I know NOTHING about growing mushrooms ..... would the salt in the she-oak be a problem ( they are normally seen near salt rivers etc)
Also fresh wood chip has tannins etc , I know garden plants sure don't like it when its fresh.

Silky oak chappo.

I wonder how they'd go on moringa

OOPS ,,
I always like me She's , VERY Silky
AHh Moringa ,, yep that would be a double winner if it works .

I hadn't settled on variety yet but did make some progress on the pasturizer. Mounted heating elements, thermostats, and some protective plastic boxes. Still have to wire it up and run an outdoor recepticle and...build a cart. Should have it done by the time the rabbits mow thru a 50lb sack of feed. I love buttons, and portabellos. I had never eaten oysters but if they are the easiest to propagate, I may go that route. I plan on using 50% manure and 50% shredded paper for the first go but definitely open to suggestions.

I'd not eaten oyster mushies either until I bought some to use for my cell cloning. It was just the common oyster and I've gotta admit I found it fairly tastless, though a good chewy texture that would be good in some things. I was going to hone my skills on these before moving onto some of the other oyter varieties that I expect would be more tasty.

VB, was this just store produce packaged mushrooms you took cloning tissue from???

Oyster mushrooms are super easy to cultivate on pasteurized straw. Here is a picture of a bucket I've got going right now:

Isaac - that looks fantastic - any chance you could give us a quick overview of the process you used ?

Particularly interested to know at what point you cut the holes in the bucket. Early on, or after the mycellium had populated most of the straw ?

Well a very quick overview looks something like this, if you need me to go more in depth at any part just let me know:

I took an oyster culture (in this case Pleurotus columbinus) on an agar plate and used a wedge of it to inoculate quart jars of sterilized wild bird seed to make my spawn. Once colonized, I used it to inoculate rice straw (my fruiting substrate) which had been water pasteurized in a 55 gallon steel drum and stuffed the straw, layered with the bird seed spawn into a 5 gallon bucket lined with a trash bag (to aid in water retention and to make cleanup easier).

The holes in the buckets were pre-drilled so once the buckets were full all I need to do was poke holes in the exposed trash bag for air exchange during colonization and to provide a place for the mushrooms to fruit from once colonized 100%. From inoculation to pinning was almost exactly 2 weeks.

I incubated the bucket in my room which is about 65°F. Once it began to pin I put it in a little greenhouse I built to provide the proper amount of air exchange and humidity. I moved the bucket from my room to the greenhouse 6 days ago.