Some old photos of some of my grows (image heavy)

[tripsis]

Ganoderma lucidum










Pleurotus nebrodensis










Pleurotus djamor

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[tripsis]

More P. djamor

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[lickapop]

Absolutely stunning pics tripsis,

tell me you do this for a living and its not some hobby that you have perfected

[tripsis]

Thanks lickapop, but I'm well and truly and amateur and have not nearly perfected it. I haven't grown for a while, I needed a break as it can be so intensive. I do miss it though, but don't have time to begin again before travels.

But no, I do it for the love of it, not for a living. It would be interesting doing it commercially, but very different and I really don't think I would enjoy after the novelty wore off. Things change when the scale escalates, things that previously weren't really an issue become the difference between success and failure. Carbon dioxide levels are one factor. While always a concern in terms of the microclimate directly around fruiting blocks, when the scale is increased, an entire room can become very rich in CO2 and ways around this need to be worked out. In a commercial premises this probably would be a problem, but at home it's more difficult, unless you have a fully converted grow room.But beyond that, the sheer amount of work to grow quantities substantial enough to make a living from would be phenomenal. Not just work, but full time dedication too. Growing mushrooms commercially would be very industrial I imagine. Having large pressure cooker for growing at home helps cut down work substantially, but you'd need a retort or similar for growing on a commercial scale.

I would have uploaded more photos, but it's such a hassle to resize pics and the 3 file limit is frustrating. It was convenient that I had already uploaded the first set of photos to Mushroom Observer.

[tripsis]

What makes it so intensive? I always assumed once you got past the spore/inital stage things were more or less smooth sailing.

Sometimes...but contamination can hit at any time, it's just once the substrate in fully colonised, the culture is much more resistant to competitors. Resistant, but not immune, which unfortunately means a grow can fail at any time.

Regardless, the entire process is quite intensive. Many hours sterilising, many hours pasteurising, etc. You know how it goes, spores to agar, isolate away from contamination or select desirable substrains. Inoculate liquid culture, or grain. Then grain to the final substrate. Amongst all that though, there's always things to sterilise, pasteurise, or prepare. Substrate preparation itself can take a long time. I've spent way too many nights labouring into the wee hours of the morning, finishing off batches of jars, or bringing bulk substrates to field capacity, then loading it into bags and pasteurising.

I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew though, so perhaps that doesn't help. If you were sensibly just doing one or two species and a few bags at a time, it would be relatively straight forward. But I was always playing with new species, trying different substrates, cooking up more grain, etc, etc. You have to be on the ball when preparing grain or pasteurising too, because if you're not, you can wreck the whole batch.

A big pressure cooker helps! My old pressure cooker could get one bag into it, my current one can fit five (more if using smaller bags). Or if using 2L jars, my old PC would fit one, my new one 8.

[lickapop]

I have to say in my limited experience that time wise it is very intensive. I have lost a few weekends and nights working hard at it

[juicemonkey]

yeah its a scale thing

beyond a few jars
the workload get heavy

unless you capitalise and go and set up a full spawn lab
pasteurisation chamber
incubation and fruiting areas

at which point you have to start making some $ from it
because of what youve invested in $ and time

and frankly imjust not sure Australia is a good mushroom market
50 to 80% of us shop at coles and woolworths for our food
so unless you get in there, you just arent going anywhere

and its a product thats just as perishable as meat

the low intensity way
is to buy premade spawn
infect logs or beds
and enjoy the perennial yet seasonal harvest that comes up in your garden

you do get shroom weary
ive got it
i know ill go back eventually. but for now its hard just to look at it

[juicemonkey]

what i can say is that all my experimnets these days are long the lines of stamets mycelium running

i want the shortest possible lab time
just only as needed to establish a pure colony and allow it to be transferred to its new outdoor and unsterile home
i want my cultures stored in logs not so many test tubes

theres a mass fruiting of GL in townsvilel atm
i picked a few kick overs yesterday
i hope the vandals leave them alone a little longer
one of them is massive!
ill try and get some pics

[tripsis]

i know ill go back eventually. but for now its hard just to look at it

Yes, it's exactly like that. Just looking at my glovebox and ever-diminishing culture library is wearying. I've lost most of my collection that I had in storage, simply because I didn't have the time and energy to transfer them out and make slants. It just isn't worth it having to have a fridge full of plates and tubes. Naturalising them in your yard would be the best way to go, but then you need your own property.

[juicemonkey]

yes its an issue

i still have property but its a very long way away
and turning out to be hard to coordinate visits to

ive still got planst to go to indo next year
and set up a place there
1 ha of ethnobotanical forest
its already a forest of coffee, choclate, durians, coconuts, nutmeg, agarwood etc
ill be augmneting it with many and varied
fruits, roots, shoots
and no doubt shrooms

and then ill prob have to come back to oz to work and save to put a few studios on there
to live in, and receive guests
of course ill need a biolab too

im thinking another issue is that a fair bit of what i had was cold climate species
but ist the tropics that really draw me now, so theye were kinda redundant anyway

so im saving myself for trips to Thailand and Taiwan
what i could collect there in a week from commercial sources would more than compensate for the extreme difficulty of getting and keeping things now.

so im still keen, im just charting a course forward

[tripsis]

You sound like you have a hell of a plan there. Would love to check out and help with this Indo enthno forest of yours one day. Durians, one of the greatest fruit on earth!

Volvariella volvacea would be a prime candidate as far as delicious, tropical, edible mushrooms go. Pleurotus tuber-regium would be a good one too, something I've been hunting for for a long time now. P. djamor and P. citrinopileatus and both warm-weather oysters too. There are plenty of choices and the number of entho plants species that thrive in tropical conditions outnumber those that don't.

How would you get many of your ethno plants into Indo?

[juicemonkey]

in my bag....

in the post

anywhich way.
the rules are different,
more of a concern about export permits for seeds and planst rather than importing

theres only 3 illegal plants
Cannabis, poppy and coca

not like the stupid rules here

besides a lot of what i want ive already taken there last trip
Aust customs was all ok with it
went through immigration with a bag full of plants - Aya, Psychs, iboga, kava, fruits and nuts, other food seeds etc,and all sorts of sundries
i declared the lot to indo customs
no problem. didnt even want to look in my bags

next time ill be taking mostly fruit trees
Grafted commercial mangos, Citrus, avos, passionfruits, some edible palms, commercial forage legume seed and innoculants etc etc
to supplement what they are lacking

if i run into trouble ill deal with it. Im making contacts in the appropriate areas of govt.
i carry no drugs, chems, nothing like that. And declare everything.

ill prob use official channels to import mycelium.
might even be good to get involved with the dept of ag in working on mushroom cultivation
there is local oyster production, and many people eat them
and they are very cheap

im not doing this as a plantation for income. im over that notion
its a living collection and resource, for conservation, use and education
so i can live healthy, and so the people who come stay on the place can too

its an awesome spot, high in the mountains. no pollution
only a misty cloudforest covered volcano for a neighbour
set above forested slopes of bounty of tropical tree crops, spices, fruits, timers, bamboos
and below are sawah, wet rice paddy, in a zone that is demarcated for agriculture and cant be developed
crystal clear delicious water from the mountain is piped to the block
friendly village nearby. cheap simple food. Bakso pork is awesome
can buy organically grown rice from the neighbour
and the occassional black skinned Kampung chicken
2 hours from airport by car, less by bike - traffic is the issue that slows
1hr to the north coast, 1 hr to the south coast
it shits over anyplace ill ever afford here, if it even exists here?

and what ill bring is comfortable traditional but modified housing
additional fruit, nut and herb crops. maybe cut flowers too
ill build some proper drying houses so produce can be processed to a higher quality

but mostly im going to soak it all in. learn to do yoga
go walking to explore the region very well, so that maybe in future i could do some ethnobotanical tours for foreign income
ill get a motorbike so i have the freedom of heart "to just go for a ride"
and to see what i can see
all in all i intend to desire less, but enjoy it more

after all how much time have you left?
and do you really want to be where you are right now?

i should stop talking and get back to study
all this talk makes me wantto go get on a plane right now....
besides its not about shrooms anymore

[sketchykid]

I go away for a week and miss all the fun.

Freakin awesome pics Tripsis! Nice one Bro. Fungi rules.

[salem]

Great pics mate, very nice.

Something I've been meaning to get into, growing some fungus.

[blowng]

You certainly have some fungus growing skills Tripsis, is Ganoderma lucidum edible? looks awesome.