Second Flush

It has been several weeks since our last post. Here is what has been happening.
The first flush of mushrooms finished and we allowed the cake to dry out for 14 days. During this time the was observable new mycelium growth  occurring on the cake. We then re hydrated it by poking holes into and soaking the mushroom patch in cold water for 4 hours.

Also we built a fruiting chamber out of a 5 gallon bucket, aquarium air pump and stone, and a plastic dome that keeps the air very humid inside. We put about a gallon and a half of spring water in the bucket and then the air stone to speed up evaporation, and two gallons of perlite to rest the tray that the cake sits on. I will do a post with a more detailed look at how to build a mushroom vegetative growth chamber, and a fruiting chamber.

Here are the results  5 days after re hydrating the mycellium.

I must comment that this is pretty exciting for us! :-)

Shiitake Omelette

We have harvested four mushrooms so far. These two are sliced up and going in my omelette now.

First Harvest

We picked the first two mature mushrooms this evening.
They will be turned into an omelette in the morning.

The two largest remaining fruiting bodies will probably be ready to harvest in the morning.

While there are many primordia showing on the cake there are no others that have taken off into a growth spurt.

Furious Fungi

It continues to amaze me how fast these mushrooms grow once they get started. The longest part of the growth cycle is the vegetative phase. That is when the mycelium is growing. It will continue to grow until it runs out of space to grow into or when it encounters a competitor. Then the mycelium will shut down vegetative growth, and make the transition into the fruiting phase.

After the first crop, or flush, of mushrooms the mycelium cake can be dried out, and then re-hydrated and it will give you a second and third flush and potentially a fourth by the time the substrate has been fully stripped of the nutrients the current mushroom is consuming. It can then be re-sterilized and used to grow a different species of mushroom that feeds on a different set of nutrients.

Here are some pictures of the progress of our shiitake mushroom patch.

 The Lamella or gills, can be seen on the first mushroom now.(Pictured above. The picture detail is too fuzzy to see it clearly though)  This is where the spores are dispersed from.
Spores form from little pods called basidia. Each basidia produces 4 spores. The gills are covered with basidia.
It should be noted that not all mushroom species share these characteristics. The fungal kingdom is a massively diverse subject that remains largely unknown to us.

And for me in particular who is only beginning a course of study on mycology the areas of ignorance are greater still. 

Flipped the mycileum cake

We flipped the mycileum cake and found two new mushrooms beginning to
grow, along with many more primordia.

Progress and Predator Fungus

The upside down mushroom is still growing at a fabulous rate. It looks slimy and not very appetizing at the moment. 

There is another mushroom forming right next door to the first one. Nice to have a buddy near by.

Upside Down Mushroom.

The first mushroom is growing strong. It's still pretty small but has increased in size by about 750% in 24 hours (that's a rough estimate).

The strange thing is that it's coming in upside down! I have read that you need to position the cake with the same vertical orientation as it was when the mycelium was forming. Perhaps we have it upside down?

We'll continue to observe and if other mushrooms grow upside down we'll flip the cake.

Mushroom primordia

The first little shiitake to poke its head out. Cute!

A Primordia is a tiny baby mushroom. At first it looks like a very small dot  growing in the mycelium cake. The dot grows larger and becomes the mushroom cap.

At the time of this picture there are a half dozen smaller primordia showing around the cake.

More primordia