Mushroom Cultivation on a small scale.

[Conchiolin]

OK today i will show you one of my countless hobbies. Mushroom Growing! I will describe very roughly the process of mushroom cultivation (not on an industrial scale though). I basically do a tissue culture on specially prepared medium using agar jelly or (the more economically feasible) gelatine. The mushroom i use are the Pleurotus eryngii they are vigorous VIGOROUS colonisers and spread like fire .

I transfer the medium to a bigger one : Boiled Grain by inoculting jars of the medium. Believe me i got a lot of contaminations and the dreadful Aspergillus Niger and Penicillum Notatum and all the rainbow colours on the grain (blue green yellow even RED!! you name it) and i discarded a lot of cultures. (I had to be very cautious since these may produce toxins that if absorbed by my culture could cause food poisoning).

Finally some logs and hay and newspaper articles were obtained and soaked in water and then the grain medium was used to inoculate them and within 3 weeks or so lovely fat mushrooms started to pop out from everywhere! Seems magical but it takes a lot of time!! (ilni minn Jannar s'issa nilghab ) BUT its's a hell of a hobby and if there's someone who will try this hobby he should do a lot of research and seek some advice from mushroom growers.

Be careful of those nasty contaminations!!

By the way if anybody is immuno-compromised i really recommend him not to try this hobby.

Some pics:

[Tonio]

I know its an old thread but...

I transfer the medium to a bigger one : Boiled Grain by inoculting jars of the medium. Believe me i got a lot of contaminations and the dreadful Aspergillus Niger and Penicillum Notatum and all the rainbow colours on the grain (blue green yellow even RED!! you name it) and i discarded a lot of cultures. (I had to be very cautious since these may produce toxins that if absorbed by my culture could cause food poisoning).

Pressure cooking the grains before inoculation for an hour or so will take care of most mold spores and other nasty bacteria and greatly increase your success rate.
And about the culture absorbing toxins..it's not true mushrooms do not absorb anything from the substrate they are grown on, apart from the nutrients.
The only reason you should always discard contaminated jars is because breathing the contamination could be toxic and if you don't toss em your house will be infested by millions and millions of mold spores which will contaminated all your future grows.
G'luck and happy mushrooming.

[Conchiolin]

Hi Mr.Tonio had to write this.

Erm yeah i read somewhere that certain mushrooms produce organic chemicals as a by-product of their metabolism and there's is this forum about mushroom cultivation and someone posted something about this and the absorption of these chemicals and so to be 100% on the safe side i decided to add that info. ( I really don't want to kill somebody by food poisoning). Better be wrong and be on the safe side but I thank you for pointing that out. Yeah maybe it's just an urban myth after all!

[Tonio]

Well I really can't say anything about any unnatural chemicals but in nature mycelium lives side by side with mold, uv rays and fresh air somehow lessen the chance of mold growing a lot.
But when it does grow usually under the soil I think (excuse me if I'm wrong about this) it doesn't make the mushrooms any less safe to eat.
But anyways you're right, better to be on the safe side. I wouldn't be too happy about picking mushrooms from a green substrate and eat it.

[Conchiolin]

Hehe me neither.

I suppose you're correct Tonio but certain molds which grow in these specially prepared substrates and in large do produce a great deal of toxins called mycotoxins and these may be a bit dangerous especially if the mold starts growing around the mushroom or even on the mushroom.
Even certain mushrooms do produce this and hence this makes them poisonous.

These mycotoxins do accumulate on the substrate:

http://www.moldreporter.org/vol1no3/mycotoxins

And these are helpful for the mould producing it in order to kill and compete with the other kind of mushroom or invador.

Take Penicillium which produces mycotoxin penicillin. The latter kills any competing bacteria on the substrate.

Apart from that the spores produced by the mold may germinate inside the human body take Aspergillus niger for example which may cause Aspergillosis. Of course this happens often in patients that are immuno-compromised (takin immuno-suppresants, having certain types of cancer etc...).

Sorry for the excess info about medicine etc but these come out when you're researching about mushroom cultivation and you have to consider those.

Perhaps a Medical doctor should enlighten us about the subject.

[MWP admin]

I think Tonio and Conchy are going to become good friends

Good that we have some buddies interested on mushrooms. There was e certain Timmy here who was a small expert, but he disappeared ?!