Low tech grain spawn failure
My low
tech oyster grain spawn experiment was a terrible
failure. Within a few days, the bags and jars were full of
various smelly molds, so I had to discard the grain onto the compost
pile.
I was shocked to see so
many "weed fungi" in the grain since I've had such good luck growing
oyster mushroom spawn on cardboard with similar lack of
sterility. I concluded there were two flaws in my grain
experiment:
- The oyster spawn I started with wasn't chomping at the bit. I harvested the mushrooms a few days before our pressure canner arrived in the mail, so I had to store the stem butts in the fridge. And the fridge has been running too cold, so the stem butts got a bit frosty. The ice didn't kill the spawn, but it did slow the oysters down so that wild molds had a chance to grow on the grain before the less vigorous than usual oyster spawn took over.
Grain may simply be too rich of
a medium for unsterile conditions. Since damp newspaper
isn't very enticing, most weed fungi can't get a toehold. But
cooked grain is delicious for all and sundry, giving the oyster
mushrooms a run for their money.
We've started a bit of
newspaper spawn with the last
few oyster mushroom stem butts of the year. Assuming
the spawn runs (which it should since I've grown oyster mushroom spawn
on cardboard before), I'll have to figure out what to expand the
cardboard spawn onto. Cardboard isn't high enough in nutrients to
keep expanding spawn on indefinitely, so I may try inoculating some
straw for a bit of indoor culture for the winter. I'll keep you
posted.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I've wanted to use coffee grounds, but since we don't drink coffee and the nearest coffee shop is about an hour away, I've never gotten around to it...
I like logs instead of wood chips in part because they're easier to get on our farm and also because you don't have to sterilize them if you start with a living tree.
I haven't tried spores either, but just last week I was thinking that I really do need to give that a shot. The downside of spores is that you introduce genetic variability, so you're not reproducing the same strain. But I've liked every kind of oyster mushroom I've eaten, wild and cultivated, so I don't think that's such a big deal. Spores would make it much easier to deal with seasonality --- I could take spores in the fall and let them sit dormant until early spring, then start some for that year's inoculations. Definitely on the experimentation list!