[Tastebridge] Oyster Mushroom Status?

[Rikke Rasmussen]

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update on the status of our project, and a link to pictures of
the first flush coming up on our second batch of oyster mushrooms. The
uncooked bags seem to be doing splendidly, given the density of the pinning
likely due to the excessive spawning rates.

Check them out!<https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/103960152819764522461/albums/posts/5672411822091143922>

I came in on Saturday to cut the second batch out of the bags (left a
couple in for comparison, but have removed those today) and put them in the
fruiting chamber. I also set up the humidistat (thanks, Jake - you rock!),
which seems to be doing a great job of regulating the humidity - at least,
it claims that humidity remains fairly constant between 90 and 93 % RH, and
is using about 75-80% less water. Someone has been awesome and donated a
tray of moisture-retaining crystals for the chamber, and since I don't see
that they could be doing any harm, I've left them in.

I have a pretty tight schedule this week, so I need to leave early tonight,
and won't have time to come back into the city tomorrow, but someone should
seriously come by and harvest some of these lovely, tender, new oyster
babies!


/Rikke


On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:31 PM, Matthew Downs <downs.matt at gmail.com>wrote:

> This is awesome.
> I will be in the hood tonight.  Will stop by to fill the humidifier and
> check on the babies.
> Thanks to ALL for your wonderful contributions!
> As for next species...i'd like to see some Shiitake!
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Rikke Rasmussen <
> rikke.c.rasmussen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Hope not too many of you showed up in vain on Monday? Roger came in early
>> and did most of the planned clean-out all by himself, and I took the
>> welcome opportunity to stay home and care for my head cold. I did go in
>> this morning to clean out the rest of the chamber, wiped everything with
>> bleach water, re-glued the magnets (the trick is to rub the glue in with
>> the tip of the gun so the plastic melts a little bit) and took a bunch of
>> pictures which I posted here<https://plus.google.com/u/0/103960152819764522461/posts>.
>> There was a fine little harvest of beautiful, big oysters as reward.
>>
>> I threw away a block that had spots of grey mold (looked like *Botrytis*,
>> at least), turned the humidifier back down to lowest setting, replaced the
>> fan with one that wasn't alive (I swear, there was oyster mycelium growing
>> on the caked spore mass!), and checked up on our babies. I discarded one of
>> the second batch of uncooked bags because of green mold contamination, so
>> we need to be pretty wary of this.
>>
>> Roger, the pressure cooked bag I photographed appeared fully colonized on
>> the bottom, too, though I generally see what you mean about there being
>> some invisible lower limit that they seemingly only cross with difficulty.
>>
>> I definitely want to do a third batch of these, though I think it's clear
>> from the experience so far that going to the effort of borrowing extra
>> propane burners and pressure cookers would be a really good idea - the
>> extra time spent on preparation is easily saved by the difference in
>> inoculation rate. However, I don't want to commit to using 40 lbs of spawn,
>> so Roger has promised to make us a  smaller portion - this will take a
>> couple of weeks, so by the time it's ready, we should have some indication
>> of how the fruiting success, and know whether to proceed with coffee or go
>> back to sawdust.
>>
>> Last, but not least: we need to come up with a rotation schedule so that
>> ten humidifier gets refilled at least every second day. I filled it to the
>> top today, but someone needs to go in on Friday and on Sunday to do it
>> again - any volunteers?
>>
>>
>> /Rikke
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 5:36 AM, Matthew Downs <downs.matt at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Shoot...I got stuck interviewing potential room mates...didn't think it
>>> would go so late...next wk!
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Michael Lyons <cprmichael at yahoo.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'll be there about 9:30
>>>>
>>>> "Dana S." <dsniezko at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >Are we meeting tonight?
>>>> >
>>>> >- Dana
>>>> >_______________________________________________
>>>> >Tastebridge mailing list
>>>> >Tastebridge at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>> >https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/tastebridge
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Tastebridge mailing list
>>>> Tastebridge at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/tastebridge
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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