The Fungal Network's videos are centered around sharing knowledge that we've learned from years of mushroom farming and wild mushroom foraging about how people can easily and effectively grow mushrooms at home or safely collect wild mushrooms. We offer more informative content on our website, as well as mushroom spawn products and high-value, low-cost DIY mushroom growing kits for home growers.
Just get a mono tub and a small air purifier. Place the purifier lower than the mono tub so that the air blows upwards. Have the top on the mono tub for a while and off for a while…depending on the humidity in your area. You don’t need anything complicated or expensive
I'm a fan of constant ventilation, but I know opinions vary. The key is to ventilate at a low enough rate that it doesn't take an excessive amount of work to keep the humidity up. If you don't want to use a smaller fan, you can always get a "dimmer" cord, that is used to lower voltage to a plug-in light, and plug your fan into that. If it's not made to be a variable-speed fan, it may not have really good control that way, but I've used this method really successfully before.
The material that's left after you grow mushrooms is referred to as spent mushroom substrate (often abbreviated as "SMS"), and there are lots of studies that show how it can be used as a soil amendment to really boost productivity. There are even studies showing that using it as mulch around tomatoes reduces bacterial wilt! Many mushroom farmers sell their SMS to gardeners or plant farmers. So yes, it's very valuable!
Very helpful video and great recipe! I was gifted some chicken of the woods today and lucked out with a new thrifted deep fryer soon after, couldn't be happier with the results.
Well everything gets exposed to lots of different molds eventually, so whether it's a regular cleaning or a cleanup after a known contamination, you can use the same thing -- regular dish soap and hydrogen peroxide. If you're having problems with contaminated fruiting blocks though, it's probably not coming from your grow chamber. Nine time out of ten it's a problem with your spawn. It could also be from not adequately pasteurizing your substrate, but that's less common
Thanks for posting Ernie! This one i come across but didn't realize was edible so woohoo, a nee mushroom to try. Only milky i knew was edible is the indigo.
That's a good question. It's really up to you, but what I do is exclude it from figuring into the flush averages by not recording any numbers. I highlight the row of cells for that block red and make a note in the comments of what happened, specifically (i.e. green or black or lipstick mold, or bacteria, etc.). As long as you don't enter anything into the weight cells, they won't be included into the averages, which is what I want because I don't want to think that a culture is performing poorly when the real problem is my sterile technique. You definitely want to track what your contamination percentage is, though, and if you can figure out where it came from each time. If it's all throughout your fruiting block evenly, it's either a problem with your substrate preparation or your spawn. If it's a single spot on the fruiting block, it's likely either a faulty bag some "dirty" thing that happened during inoculation. Hope this helps, friend!
Bei uns wachsen sie im Buchenwald, wir trocknen sie , machen eine Rahmsauce, dann brauchts kein Fleisch. Dazu Süss Kartoffeln oder Karotten, lecker! In welchem Monat sammelt ihr die?
Love how easy you have made this! Put pink coral block in fruiting chamber with the micropore tape and waiting - which really is the hardest part of the process 😅
Ernie and Cathy at the Fungal Network are tops! Thanks for all of the info and the effort you guys put into it. I'm getting ready to start a fruiting chamber and will be working on some stuffing some buckets pronto. All of your info is so helpful!
A really fun way to spend a day! Most the logs will fruit for about 5 years in my experience. I sometime help them out by soaking them for 8-12 hours...it can kickstart the fruiting. Keep them out of the sun.
Picking a mushroom is not killing it. It's no different than picking an apple off an apple tree. The mushroom you see is just a fruit of the mycelium in the ground
So what suspected species is this? The Amanitas have SOME deadly, and quite a few less toxic species like the fly agarics that can be carefully processed and eaten. I literally have over 10 pounds of the yellow species of fly agarics growing here yearly that I dispose of. Be extremely careful of eating ANY wild mushroom. Even the Inky caps can be dangerous because there's a variant that causes extreme digestive distress if alcohol is consumed within 24 hours of eating. I have eaten the Shaggy Manes (inky cap species) without issues, but not everyone is the same as myself with tolerance to eating mushrooms. So DON'T do it. I am extremely interested in mycology and wild edibles, but never eat what I cannot 100% accurately identify. I have held enough destroying angel in my hand in the past year to kill 100 people. THAT is how common they are! Do not take the chance with your life. Do your research and be safe rather than sorry.
Friend, your warnings are right on. Although some Amanitas are edible, I'm an advocate for folks to make a personal rule to just exclude Amanitas from their diet. This particular one appears to be a destroying angel. I myself am not an adventurous eater, in that I have my list of mushrooms that I will eat, and I don't play at the edges. I recommend that others also not play at the edges. But definitely get out there, find, and appreciate the awesome diversity of things in the woods. There are plenty of things in life that you should enjoy and appreciate without sticking it in your mouth, and this is one of them!
@@thefungalnetworkvideo I would very much agree that this "egg" is a destroying angel mushroom. Very common here and easily mistaken for the common and choice field agaric mushroom that is very edible. The field agaric is white but has pink to brown gills where as the destroying angel is completely white. Another similar choice mushroom is the horse agaric which tends to be white with pink to brown gills, however, they get massive. I picked one several years ago that weighed 1.5 pounds. Regardless, I didn't eat it despite being able to identify. The agarics are a species that have no sympathy or mercy if you make a mistake. However, I find mycology and learning HOW to differentiate the species fascinating!
I am looking for a better way to fruit two blocks so this great. Question and a comment: Q: if you are blowing unfiltered air into the chamber what is the purpose of the micro-pore tape on the exhaust? Or is the wicking cloth filtering enough and the micro-pore tape is filtering any spores and/or back flow? C: It can help to run the hole saw backwards on both sides to score the plastic before going forward (slowly pushing but spinning fast with the finest tooth you can get). The drill bit will still sometimes catch and pull the saw through too fast. I guess melting a hole with a soldering iron would be foolproof but not too good to breath.
Good question, and good comment! So I don't worry about filtering incoming air because it's not going to be a "clean" environment in there regardless. But I like to filter the outgoing air to keep it from sending spores out into the home. It also keeps things like flies from getting in (hopefully the fan would kill them on the intake side). And I like your idea about running the saw backwards to score the circle before going all the way through. I'll try that next time. I had thought about melting a hole as well, but test holes had worked pretty well with the hole saw, so I just went with that. Of course it waits until the camera's running to catch wrong. Still worked fine though:)
We never found morels in fields until we happened to see them. Now we look there. Never found them in a stand of white pines until we happened to see them, so now we look there. Basically, we now look everywhere we go in late March and early April, because they seem to defy expectations.
@@thefungalnetworkvideowe tramped all around the deep woods in Tennessee and found only a few. Then we found two awesome patches in this scrub brush and briars off of a pipeline. They do grow where you would not expect them to!
That's a good question. I expect it depends on the paper waste. I haven't seen studies on it, but mushrooms will take up heavy metals, so certainly it's possible that they have toxins in them if the paper was exposed to any. I would love to see a food chemistry lab actually test some samples. In the meantime, we don't eat anything we're not sure of!
@@PrincessCaterpie We just compost them. The important thing for us is that the paper is getting composted and turned into a great compost/mulch for our trees and flower gardens instead of going to the landfill. I got excited a couple of weeks ago when I saw a new scientific article out of Eritrea about using paper waste to grow oyster mushrooms, thinking that they may have done an analysis of the presence of unhealthy compounds in the mushrooms, but unfortunately they did not, just detailed finding, like us, that it can be done effectively. So until we can find a food chemistry lab to work with us and analyze the mushrooms, they're getting composted.
We have just subscribed to your Channel and look forward to watching and following your journey 🙂 Regards, Anne and Alan, Woodbridge Hill Cottage, Tasmania, Australia youtube.com/@woodbridgehillcottage
Your work and presentation is excellent. I am a North Carolina cultivator hoping to scale up my farming in the coming years, and it's really nice learning from your work with such a scientific lens + in a geographic area relevant to me. Thank you for your work!
Small-scale growing for your own food is pretty easy -- if you've got about a square foot of counter space you can definitely have good success with a home fruiting kit!
Where is it's grow area in the States? I used to prowl the woods alot. I currently live in eastern Oklahoma, and haven't seen anything I know, which is limited. I need a good book of mushrooms. I'm familiar with morels.
This is in the foothills of North Carolina. I'm not too familiar with what mushrooms are common in OK, but my relatives in KS definitely get lots of morels every spring🙂
Jealous man.. I've been hunting for a few years and I've got a handful of dream finds, never seem to get lucky though. Still no hen of the woods, lions mane, morel, or cauliflower mushrooms. I've got friends that send me pics but I've never gotten on any. Some beautiful old man of the woods in my yard two days ago though!
Keep hope alive, friend! Before you go out looking, spend a little time looking at photos to get your search image set, then just keep putting in your time. Eventually it will pay off. For maitake particularly, it really helps to get off the path and just wander through the woods from tree to tree. They look so much like leaves piled up at the base of the tree that you sometimes don't see them unless you're right there with them. Good luck!
I have the best luck off trail in oak or maple stands look for lumps of leaves from a distance at the base of the trees when you get up close you will realize it’s hen of the woods. I also have found big fruitings that I didn’t see till I almost stepped on them so keep your eyes peeled it’s in season right now I’m seeing many fruitings in every patch of woods near me.
