Well here is a great page with all the basics.
www.mykoweb.com/articles/cultivation.html
I'm just getting started myself but I'm very close to being able to do everything and almost have everything I need to cultivate.
Some things are hard to find but you can get by with some very basic equipment.
Your shaggy mane is probably liquid goo by now (they don't keep)
but what you need to do is cook up some PDA (Potato Dextrose Agar)
and get some petri dishes ...Glad or ziplock containers will do instead of petri dishes, look for the "PP" in a triangle on the container bottom that means Pollypropolene. short mason jars would work too.
If you're into the Magic mushrooms you can make "Cakes" in the containers too.not my thing but hey you pick up all sorts of info trying to grow gourmet mushrooms.I think Cakes would work for Oyster mushrooms as well.
here is a page on using a roll of TP for a small crop of Oyster mushrooms.
www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk/NCBE/MATERIALS/MICROBIOLOGY/oyster.html
get a small propane torch for sterilizing, bunsen burners leave soot on the blade.
An exacto knife with a #11 blade is a good substitute for a scalpel.
Start with Oyster mushrooms (or Enokie),they are really easy to grow.
You can get them fresh at some grocery stores
Wash your hands.
snap it open ,don't cut it cause cutting it drags surface bacteria into the wound, cut out a bit of flesh from the middle with your freshly sterilized blade and drop it onto the agar.
Try to do transfers and sterile work in a still room first thing in the morning before people stir up the dust in the house.
The furnace and air conditioning should be off for a few hours before you work too.I have filters over the vents in my work room.
Or work in your kitchen make 4 or 5 transfers and hope for the best.
a glove box would help if you can't make a room clean enough.
here is your bare bones cheap lab shopping list.
-Exacto knife with a #11 blade
-PDA
-Pollypropolene Ziplock or Glad containers
-Tinfoil
-Isopropol Rubbing Alcohol %90 or a spray bottle of 90% water 10% bleach
or 5% Peroxide solution.
-A pressure cooker
-masking tape or micropourus adhesive tape(for bandages)
-birdseed
-cotton balls or batting
Mix your PDA and melt it together on the stovetop in a big pyrex measuring cup.
pour it into the containers(or petri dishes) 1/4 inch or so deep and let it set
put the lids on loose.
cover the containers with tinfoil to keep the water from dripping off the pressure cooker lid as it cools and sterilize the containers in the pressure cooker at 15 psi for 1 hour.let it cool while closed.
Open the cooker (in about 2 hours)and with sterile hands close the agar container lids tightly then remove the foil cover then tape them shut.
They will keep for months in the fridge or wherever.
Clone some mushroom tissue and let it grow for a week or so until it just covers the surface of the agar,if anything other than the mushroom appears to be growing on the agar you take it outside the work room and get rid of it.Consider yourself contaminated for the rest of the day and don't try cloning or transfering anything until you've had a shower and changed.If you must save the clone cut out a small healthy looking section and transfer it to a new agar dish,keep transfering until the dish grows clean.get rid of messed up cultures outside and at the end of the day not while you're doing sterile work or before you do other sterile work.
soak the seed overnight in warm water to trick all the bacteria into waking up and then sterilize it in the pressure cooker at 15 psi for 2 and 1/2 hours to kill them all.let it cool.
cut the agar into chunks and transfer 2 or 3 to the seed container or break up the agar with a sterile wire and pour in the sterile seed.tape it shut,shake,incubate and wait till it's grown thru (turned white) then fruit it.
Fruiting...sigh that's a whole other post! :wink:
Every mushroom is different..some need a cold shock some need light cycles some need dark some need high CO2 some need low CO2 high humidity a specific temperature a casing layer or no casing layer or all the damn planets to line up in a row! Check Paul Stamets book the mushroom cultivator for details on fruiting conditions for specific mushrooms.
It really depends on the mushroom and I haven't fruited anything yet!
I started late last year and switched to forraging(and cloning wild strains) for the summer...now I'm getting the lab going again for the winter.
Wish me luck!
Sorry for the long reply...I tried to keep it short
Peterthinks
