Thursday, January 6, 2011

Growing mushrooms conclusion

Two months ago I began growing oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds.  Here is that initial post.  I simply mixed some oyster mushroom spawn with spent coffee grounds I got from the school cafeteria.  Well, things went pretty well but not perfectly.  The mushroom mycelium grew quite well on the coffee grounds and I was able to grow quite a few mushrooms.  I had one major problem though.  Being that I was growing them in the desert the mushrooms almost always dehydrated before they were a few inches tall.  So I ended up with tons of tiny shriveled-up mushrooms.  I tried several methods to increase the humidity, none of which worked adequately.  When I enclosed the entire bucket in plastic to preserve moisture the fungi didn't have enough oxygen so deformed mushrooms formed.

An abundance of small, dehydrated oyster mushrooms growing on coffee grounds.  The white surface is mushroom mycelium.  Mycelium are sort of like mushroom roots.

Same bucket two months ago.  The black coffee grounds quickly turned white as mycelium grew.
I do have this to say though.  The few mushrooms that I did get from the bucket were by far the best I have ever tasted.  I plan on trying to grow mushrooms in the near future again.  This time however I will have to create some sort of terrarium that holds in the moisture but also allows for air exchange.

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