Now that the nonsense of road trips and beach dips are nearly over, I can get down to my much awaited bucket grow! Today is about getting all the materials together so we are ready to go next week. My daughter in law is going to join in the fun - they're busy walking around Melbourne cafes at the moment looking for food grade buckets with lids. Recycling would be better, but if not, I'll grab some from our local hardware as they aren't very expensive and can be used again and again!
I'll be growing oyster mushrooms, following the instructions of the Milkwood Permaculture people down in Tasmania. Their video course is quite comprehensive.
Milkwood Permaculture has a great mushrooming growing course
What I need is:
- Straw (clean, seed free - sugar cane mulch in a bag might be best bet)
- Sawdust (currently asking in community pages if anyone has any hardwood shavings from chopping wood - we're out!)
- Micropore tape (from the chemist)
- Hydrated or builders lime
- Gypsum
- Sterilising liquid
- Gloves and goggles (because the lime can be irritating)
- A pillowcase to drain the pasteurised substrate
_ An esky (to keep the hot water and substrate in for an hour) - Rope to hang the pillowcase til it's drained
- A tub to mix the substrate
- A bucket to measure the straw
- A step drill to drill hols in the buckets
- Food grade buckets with lids, 4 - 5 L in size
As far as I understand so far it's a matter of sterilising EVERYTHING, pasteurising the substrate, and then stuffing the buckets with it.
I'll be detailing exactly what we do in another post, but for now, it'll be cool to have any tips you have to throw at me! It's taken a while to get all the stuff together.
Oh, one thing that's bothering me is whether my mushroom spawn is viable still. I've left it in the fridge whilst on holidays - it was dumb of me to get it so early - I think it's okay, but it would be cool to have an unequivocal yes/no from the HIVE fungi grower crew!
With Love,
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I've always wanted to try this! My first ever mushroom I cultivated was the hallucinogenic kind, Psilocybe cubensis. Apparently I'm a natural at it. Of course, now I'm banned from growing all kinds of mushrooms which I think is a little unfair. Anyways, that's all the experience I have.
I can imagine the excitement when you eagerly bought your spawn right away. I bought mine as spores in an aqueous solution and even that can last a few weeks in the 'frigerator. Your spawn might still be good!
I wonder if I can get away with growing wine cap mushrooms outdoors...
Can't wait to follow (and possibly carry out) your process!
I think that's unfair as well. Did they put a time limit on the ban? They should have, otherwise it's just not legal 😂 Tell them the Queen of the Garden Journal ordered you can grow ALL THE MUSHROOMS.
A royal decree, eh? That should convince them!
I love mushrooms🤤. How I wish I could grow them here too. Did you know that we can only harvest edible mushrooms during rainy days and with big thunderstorms? its the only time that they grow here.
Oh wow really???? I wonder if resihi would grow, it likes it hot. More medicinal than culinary though.
yes, but I don't have an idea of what variety is it. I don't know if resihi would grow here too. I just heard those ready to grow mushrooms.
Hi River.
I am so excited for you! Oyster mushrooms are so much fun to grow! I grew a few ready made boxes of them and it was a wonderful experience. I love that you are doing the whole process!
I can't answer your question about the spores, but I would like to think that in the wild spores tend to survive cold spells, so I reckon use them and see?
Can't wait to see the posts!
Have a great weekend!
x Andy x
I'm going to use them and see, and order more... I have enough buckets and ingredients now!!! So exciting. I think this way you can get way more as there's more food for them? Idk. Next is a mini grow room for them. Exciting stuff
Super exciting! Gosh a whole grow room would be insanely cool! Are you going to branch out and try the other varieties as well? Apparently Shitakes are harder to grow but very rewarding.
I'd like to . Once I get a grip on the oysters I will try others!!!
Oh... I want try all this ones 😅👌👌👌 they look very cool .
Cool Project. Sounds a bit labor intensive. Be curious to see how it progresses.
I think it's only labour intensive to start with. Gathering the stuff is the worse part! But once all the materials are there and I've done it once, it should be easier.
Yeah, once you've worked out a system, it's bound to be easier.
Wow that's dope! I saw that dude was drilling in wood, putting sawdust spawn in there!
Oh thats cool, a different type of shroom I think.
Interesting. I was talking to a friend this week about mushrooms. He lived in Ireland for a while and we were remembering how mushrooms were inexispensive over there. I told him I wanted to cultivate in our ranch, but thought it was way to difficult. It seems it indeed is.
No it's not, you just have to understand how they grow and be able to get some spawn and the ingredients. It can be intimidating at first I guess, which is why I did the online course.
nice... didnt know you could do this in a bucket!
Oh yes!!! You will be amazed!!
I can't wait to see the followups. I love mushrooms, though my hubby might start hating me if I start experimenting with them too lol. I bought a herbal medicine book from a doctor also trained in holistic medicine with multiple sclerosis and she is using 2 tinctures of 2 types of mushrooms to help control her disease. I would live to look more into that. Have a beautiful day!
This is so exciting, I can't wait to get on the new land (yes still waiting almost 5 weeks now in transit) to ready to explore more and start growing, I've only grown with kits so far. I am going to go check out Milkwood, love the idea of growing them in buckets xxxxxx
I'll be posting step 2 soon so you can learn from what I did. I'll try to make it as simple as possible! Now the waiting...
When Nem was a little girl, my father and brothers and I used to go to the forest near where we lived and pick mushrooms. My father was pretty good at this. He knew very well the poisonous mushrooms. we had so much fun. Collecting mushrooms is a really nice activity. Now my father is very old. Maybe he can't even remember those days. Now I went to those days when I saw the mushrooms on your post. We should appreciate every moment.
Oh gosh yes. HOw old is your father? I think we always miss the days where our father seemed young and fit and we followed them around. How nice it is you have this memory and he passed that on to you. Maybe you can do that with your children. :)