Couple of months ago I really got into growing mushrooms. I was also interested in picking wild mushrooms and my first few were birch bolete and porcini, I was super excited! However this post is purely on my first cultivation.
I mixed 2 part vermiculite, 1 part brown rice flour and 1 part of water mixed it all well in a bowl. Then scooped them into wide mouth jar with four holes on top thinking I would use a syringe mushroom culture. Instead I used grain spawn to inoculate the jars and covered the holes with tyvek to let it breath during colonization and prevent from contamination. Before inoculation, placed them into a large pot with a bit of water, raised it with some jar lids so the jars aren't in direct contact with water, bring to boil then simmer, closed with tight lid and let it steam for 2 hours. I then turn it off to cool down over night.
Because I didn't have the syringe culture, I didn't add vermiculite before the sterilizing process. I opened the lids in a still air box and carefully inserted small amount of grain spawn into each jar, covered back up and placed them on the shelf a 3 weeks. I did two different types, one shiitake and the other oyster mushrooms. The shiitake jar looked contaminated, I tried growing them but nothing came out and it just looked like an infected brf cake.
As you can see, these are the brown rice cake I made all fully colonized. I dunked them into water over night, rinsed them, add dry vermiculite all over, placed them in a humid place and sprayed water couple of times a day.
Couple of days later these little guys came out! But they're very long and skinny with not much on the cap. Found out later that they don't grow well indoors with high cO2. So I took them outside for fresh air.
The caps started getting much larger! Yay!
Harvest!!! Cut the ends off, some people keep them to inoculate another batch instead of buying spawns but I cant be bothered lol. Washed them and stir fried with olive, salt and garlic. Delicious!
This wasn't my usually photography post but thought its worth sharing with my Steemians.
Photos were taken with my cell phone because I too lazy at the time to use my DSLR camera :)
Have a fabulous day!