I thought some folks might want to see an update on what I’ve been growing. For reference, I tried to grown button mushroom spawn on boiled cardboard, only to learn a few days later that this shouldn’t be possible. Imagine my surprise when the mycelium started growing anyway!
So it’s been about three weeks now and growth has been painfully slow, but then again they didn’t really have any decent food. I also realized when I opened the container that there was still way too much moisture in the cardboard. Today I transferred what I could into grain jars to give it a better chance at growth. Basically I went through all the layers and peeled the cardboard apart, then tore off smaller chunks of anything that had decent growth on it. This was divided between a jar of popcorn kernels and a jar of rye berries, so I have a good chance of one or both jars really expanding the small amount of spawn I had available. Considering this was started from chopped stems I got at the grocery store, I’d say I’m doing pretty good so far!
I’ve started doing some reading on how to make the pasteurized compost for this type of mushroom, hoping to start picking up supplies next weekend to get it ready.
Afraid I’m in the US, so that won’t be possible, but thanks for the offer! I did recently discover a local farm growing lion’s mane though, and I saw fresh shitake in the store this weekend so I do have some options.
Yeah I was doing a bunch of reading on how to get started, then put in orders for things I couldn’t find locally. While I was waiting I ran across that article about starting mushrooms on cardboard and thought I’d give it a try. A few days later I found out button mushrooms “need” a good manure compost to grow, but I kept it going to see if I would get any contam. And then I started seeing mycelium growing and was just amazed that it had worked. So now that some of the cardboard has been transferred to grain I’m just waiting to see if the mycelium makes the leap.
I’m not sure what size these guys will end up growing to. I grabbed a few from a bulk bin at the grocery store which still had the base of the stem and some obvious mycelium on them. Judging by what they have on the shelf, these could be anything from just a few centimeters to much larger. I’ve seen white buttons there with caps between 2cm to about 7cm, so there’s quite a variety in genetics.