Friday 5 February 2010

Fruiting Bodies


For Christmas I was given an oyster mushroom growing kit. It was a bag of straw and some dried spores. First I had to sterilize the straw by pouring boiling water into the bag and leaving it for a couple of hours, then left it to drain for a couple more hours. I then scattered the spores into the bag and shook it up to distribute them around the straw. Then the bag had to be left in a warm place for four weeks. I don't have an airing cupboard, or any other consistently warm place in my house, so I put it on my heated propogator tray and wrapped it all up in bubble wrap and a towel. So four weeks have now passed, and then the bag has to be chilled for a couple of days (outside in the shed). After all this, when you take the straw out of the bag it is held together by the mycelial structure which has been forming. A couple of days later, and the tiny beginnings of mushrooms have appeared... I have never grown mushrooms before, so a new experience for me.

The rest of the seed potatoes had started chitting so they have been spread out on windowsills to continue in the light. I have had to start some more broad beans in pots in the greenhouse to replace all the ones which have been destroyed by frost. Hopefully they will be ready to plant out at the beginning of March, when I will also sow the rest of the packet direct into the ground. If the worst of the cold weather isn't over by then I will be really depressed.

And I have sowed some sweet peas!
No sign of the celeriac germinating yet.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks minging....:o) I have seen the mushroom kits before and never really thought I would enjoy growing them - but it actually looks like the results may be fab! Hope they keep growing...

Rachael said...

They're growing scarily fast! Will post another pic soon...

Jo said...

I've seen those mushroom growing kits in the garden centres but thought it was all a bit too much faff to have a go with them. I look forward to seeing your results though, I might just change my mind. I didn't sow my sweet peas in autumn so that's a job I've yet to do.

Kella said...

I have done the mushroom growing kit thing at least three times in the past and each time got enough shrooms for one meal. My down fall is not keeping the fungi moist as I always tend to forget to mist the growing mass. Hope you have better success.

My next attempt would be logs and to leave it all to nature.

Rachael said...

I haven't really found it to be too much of a faff Jo, the hardest bit so far has been finding the warm place to incubate it. Now I think I might have the same problem as Kella - forgetting to mist it, although the pool of water in the saucer seems to be keeping it moist enough for now. The biggest one at the moment is about 2 1/2 inches long - but it's all stalk and no top!

Poppy said...

I love the photo, it looks so weird and amazing all at the same time.

I've grown mustrooms a couple of times but do forget to water them so never get the best crop. This year we are have a 'food store' (almost finished) so I'm going to have another go with button mustrooms as we eat loads of these. I have a few kits for mustroom logs at I bought for about 50p each in a clearance sale that I'm going to try to remember to start them off and keep the logs away from the fire wood pile too.