My first attempt at growing Blue Oyster mushroom

Substrate recipe:

  • 300 g of spent coffee grounds

  • 600 g of cardboard from shipped packages and used coffee filter papers, shredded by hand

  • 1.1 L of tap water

Layered the cardboard and coffe grounds Inside a polypropylene bag (39 x 50 cm), then added 1.1 L of water, used a reusable ziptie to close the bag, and pressure cooked for ~1 hr 30 min.

The following morning, using a still-air box, I innoculated the substrate with mason jar’s worth (~700 mL) of blue oyster rye grain spawn.

Allowed the mushroom to colonize for about 3 weeks, then made a hole in the bag.

What I liked a lot about this grow is that the substrate mix consists of recycled materials. This was my first time using coffee, and I thought it would easily get contaminated. Luckily this was not the case. The mushrooms grew very fast and I had no contamination issues.

  • @Slatlun@lemmy.ml
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    fedilink
    22 years ago

    I don’t know anything about growing mushrooms, but using wastes to grow them is awesome. Does the substrate effect flavor at all?

    • SalamanderOPMA
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      22 years ago

      Yeah! When I have the time I like to use the cardboard to grow mushrooms, then put the spent substrate into a worm bin, and eventually use the worm casings for making soil mixes. It is more fun than putting the cardboard into the recycling bin.

      I was going to say that I did not think that the flavor was affected, but I have done a quick literature search and it turns out that the substrate does affect the flavor! From what I can gather, the effect is mainly due to the nutritional differences in different substrates leading to the formation of different secondary metabolites. So, growing the mushroom in a substrate supplemented with coffee grounds will probably not give the mushrooms a coffee-like flavor, but the mushrooms might taste different than if you supplement the substrate with wheat bran or soybean hulls instead.