Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

no problem!

That's how you can make the most out of spore syringes or a start of grain spawn. If you look around on the web, there are some legitimate spore and mycelium sources that sell in syringes and grain spawn, and you can get a wider variety of species. Use just 1-2 ml of that syringe at a time to make thousands of jars of grain spawn for inoculating baskets or whatever you need.

Master Spore Syringe (10ml) > Master Grain Jars (5 x 500 ml) > 2.5 l Mycelium water > Grain Jars (800 x 500ml) > 800 cardboard, Baskets or about 8 m3 of substrate.

That's a lot of mushrooms, if you do it right. When you consider that they are selling 50 g of grain spawn for what it costs to produce 20 kg of grain spawn, it's a significant savings to start from a good source and keep a strain going as long as possible.

Well there's another "thing" I have to learn

I'm in the process of building a self emptying swirl filter for solids removal, and was wondering if fish solids might be a good mushroom substrate.

The plan to date is to have the solids (and some water) dump to a worm farm, but now I'm thinking a mushroom farm might be better.

I just read through this thread, and most of the mushrooms seem to grow on straw or wood. I always thought mushrooms liked manure. Do varieties exist that might suit what I have in mind? Or better yet, are there varieties that might suit growing in a worm farm. Or a worm farm in a sack made of shade cloth?

Normal old white or brown button mushrooms grow on a mix of manure and straw. Most others that I have read of grow on wood or straw. Coffee grounds can be added to the straw if you have them to use.

Does anyone do cooling for their mush... room?

If so how?

We run our house at whatever temperature it happens to be for most of the year, so there's really no such thing as room temperature.

Hey BullwinkleII! How are things?

I keep mine in a root cellar for getting them to fruit, but running water over them from an AP system will help cool them. The best thing is to grow a species that is adapted to the current temperatures. I grow different species for spring/winter than I do for summer and fall.

As far as using sludge to grow mushrooms, mix it with a lot of straw or wood chips and grow oyster mushrooms or garden giants, and they will certainly process it. Oyster mushrooms, in general, are very aggressive and can grow on any number of substrates.

Buttons, portabella, etc are part of the Agaricus mushrooms, and they grow on manures that have been partially composted. They also prefer dark, whereas the oyster and garden giants need light to fruit.

Cool.

Thanks.

I think my water temps are too high at the moment (25c at 2am), but when they come down I might try diverting some water through a hose wrapped around inside a laundry basket to attempt to cool it.

From I've seen so far temperature and moisture content seem to be key. I notice a lot of people's plastic bag versions tend to set mushrooms in one of the cuts, but not the others. I'm guessing that's because there are subtle differences in different places in the bag. You laundry basket looks like it gives the mushrooms their pick of where to live.

Why do you only get a few fruitings(blooms?) from an inoculated container. ie what is it that gets used up and runs out? is there any reason why whatever it is cant just be reapplied?

I want a magic box that has perpetual mushrooms growing out of it

the substrate is what gets used up, it's their food. Also, the mycleium gets weaker and stops growing as much after each fruiting. Perpetual mushrooms can be had from things like wood chips, which take longer to break down and you can keep adding to the pile. Mushrooms will fruit, and some spores will fall into the pile starting a new mycelium and keeping it going.

Temperatures are important, but 25C is not out of range for a lot of species. There are warm weather and cold weather mushrooms.

I wish my hardware store would just make a section for seeds and mushrooms that are suitable to plant NOW so I wouldn't have to do all this thinking

Here they come in 18 days , very happy with that



Holes maybe too small in this basket for the side ones

those are looking nice, Mantis!

Awesome!

Well it turns out the holes are big enough

First lot for breaky the other day



And this lot went in with some quail for tonights dinner

those are nice! What size are the holes? I seem to remember bucket techs on shroom forums stating holes should be 3/4-1" (2-2.5cm) in diameter. If the mushrooms can fruit, then it doesn't matter.

These holes would only be about 8mm , but they seem to work