I am curious if anyone here would have any knowledge on how to perpetually keep a strain of mushroom growing - namely [Lentinula edodes]? I recall reading somewhere about placing a mature cap on a paper and tapping it to release spores in the gills on the underside, but am clueless as to how to store this, to inoculate, if contaminates are big problems, the duration to growth after innoculating, if it looks the same as the parent if it is safe to consume, etc. Any information I would
appreciate :idea:
glow [/i]
Contams will be a big problem with a print just taken from the grocery store or picked in the wild. A better way to go in such circumstances would be to make yourself a glovebox, sterilize it, dip that shroom into hydrogen peroxide, then use a sterile blade to cut into the center of the cap (in the cap just above where the stem meets the cap) and cut out a small bit that would quickly be transferred to a petri plate. This is called cloning. Once you get a culture on petri you can keep it going for a long time if cut out and transferred to more plates with different agar mixes and onto slants kept in the cold, take prints off shrooms grown in cleaner areas for long term storage... all a lot of work and requireing some real $$ outlay to buy ready made materials (pressure cookers, jars, plates, agar, glove box, grow chambers...) or a fair bit of research and time to 'do it yourself' your way through it.
It'd be easier to buy a used copy of The Mushroom Cultivator through bookfinder.com, buy some spawn or innoculated wood plugs for around $20 and knock up 10-20 logs this spring and grow them out ... then clone your own shrooms or purchase another bag of pre-made plugs when your logs stop producing. mushroompeople.com has a nice guide to shitake cultivation on their site and they also carry edible and medicinal spawn and cultures (as do the fine folks at sporeworks). This is really the way to do it unless you want to go large scale commercial, in which case you really need to get a handle on personal grows anyway before you invest heavily.
This is a complex procedure. There is much background reading that should be done. There are many wonderful books that deal with mushroom cultivation generally, and shiitake cultivation in particular.
Thanks for the posts! It seems a step by step guide is what I need.
I will try to find mushroompeople & sporeworks. I found a source called "Edible Landscaping" where I could get an inoculated 4 ft oak log,
but would like to keep the investment going properly without poisoning myself with look alikes or cotaminates. Spore prints? Not a clue, but sounds like an interesting hobby to accuire
glow