Little smaller than my hand.

TL;DR: Urea is a great supplement for substrates and culture media!

Background:

Fungi, need , next to an energy source (e.g. wood), nitrogen to grow. If too little nitrogen is available, growth suffers, which increases the risk of contamination, and yields also decrease.

Some species of fungi, including oyster mushrooms, turn into carnivores under these circumstances and secrete a secretion that attracts flies, which are then digested by it, along with their larvae.

Unfortunately, this is sometimes not only disgusting, but also introduces a lot of contamination.

Therefore, many growers use supplemented substrate, for example HWFT with grain- or soy hulls. This supplementation increases the nutrient content, but also the risk of contamination, which is why it must always be handled sterilely and be autoclaved. However, many growers do not have the capacity or want to do this.

For agar and liquid media, yeast extract or peptone is often used. Yeast extract colours the solution strongly, and peptone is somewhat expensive and difficult to obtain.

This is where AdBlue comes in. This is normally used for diesel vehicles to prevent the formation of harmful exhaust gases. AdBlue is a pure 33% urea solution, available at any petrol station for 2€/ litre. Urea is a very bioavailable source of nitrogen, which why it is also used in agriculture as a fertiliser. You know where I want to go....

Set-up of my experiment:

Agar medium:

• 4 plates with different urea concentrations were prepared. 0 g/l (reference), 0.25 g/l, 0.5 g/l and 1 g/l.
• base recipe: 40 g/l rice syrup, 17 g/l agar, 1l tap water (addition: the amount of rice syrup was too much back then, I halved it now for future recipes)
• the plates were inoculated with oyster mushroom culture (same size agar transfer of a fresh clone)
• the plates were regularly checked and photographed
• and then I compared the growth (appearance and size of the mycelium).

Substrate:

25 g gypsum, 2.5g urea and 2l water were added to 1 kg dry matter (hardwood fuel pellets).

The reference was identical, only without the addition of urea.

Approx. 500g of Grainspawn was added to the bucket (total content: approx. 3kg) and this was stored warm for growing.

Results:

Agar (after one week):

Imgur, 1 week

• Reference: little visible growth, mycelium looks very weak. Very fine, almost invisible hairs over the petri dish.
• 0.25 g/l: best growth. Very fast and dense
• 0.5 g/l: similar to 0.25 g/l
• 1 g/l: very strong/dense mycelium (almost rhizomorph), but slow growth.

After 2.5 weeks:

Imgur, 18 days

As after one week, only stronger (reference is now very overgrown with air mycelium, 0.25 looks best, 0.5 similar, 1 g/l little growth).

Substrate:

Bucket is almost completely overgrown after only a few days Imgur, 3 days; after one week completely. Imgur, 3 days/1 week

After 2 weeks it became a solid white block. Normally this takes almost a month for me!

Update, after only 16 (!) days:

The first pins were already forming just a few hours after posting! Imgur, bucket after 16 days No visible primordia on the reference bucket without urea...

Yield:

I will post/edit as an update later.

Normally it takes about a month for the first pins to appear for me. With the supplemented buckets it seems to take a bit longer so far. It didn't quite look like primordia were appearing yet.

The reference is already forming the first spots, which indicate that fruiting is imminent.

Further thoughts:

• Urea has an effect on growth
• I will use it in the future in my agar media and LCs at 0.3 g/l (1ml per liter)
• Effect on substrate and yield is TBD

I don't know anything about mushrooms. Found these in my garden, Washington state (Puget sound)

I love how tiny and delicate they are! Northern West Virginia.

These are some older photos of what I believe is Hericium cirratum, a species related to Hericium erinaceus (otherwise known as Lion's Mane Mushroom).

Apparently this mushroom is rather rare where I am (Central England).

The older mycologists I'd informed of the location had told me not to share the location online as apparently this mushroom is very popular for poaching.

Still one of the most unique mushrooms I've encountered

Found this all over my local trail in Hawaii. Looks like turkey tail but not white on the edges and not a lot of color separation. Also, Ive never id’ a mushroom.

These seem pretty common, still don't know what they might be though. Showed up the same day as the last mushrooms I posted. It's fun to see so many different kinds.

Can you say what theses are?

I'm not really sure what they are (I've never ID'd a mushroom before) but they looked cool. We've had some extra rain this spring, and these guys sprouted out of nowhere.

laughed my ass off when I found this assortment, laughing again now. pls enjoy

Genus Hygrocybe according to an iNaturalist user!

It is so dry in my part Germany right now, the only mushrooms that grow in significant numbers are summer oysters. And then they are often too dry aswell. This is the only good patch I found during my last hunt.

How are things in your places?

Edit: cannot upload my oyster pic :(

Will it be ok on the bottom shelf of my indoor greenhouse? Tropical plants have been happy there.

Some wild Psilocybes in SE, Pennsylvania.

It's not much to look at yet, but my oyster spawn is doing nicely after only four days. I picked up some spawn off ebay for pink and blue oysters, not realizing just how tiny an amount 10g really was. Well I had already been reading about expanding spawn in grain jars, and was advised here to also try popcorn kernels in addition to the rye berries I had already ordered. I got seven jars cooked and sterilized last weekend and did the transfer in a still air box on Tuesday. What you are seeing in the pic below is the blue oyster spawn, of which the 10g was divided between three jars (the third one not pictured is another popcorn jar), so there was very little to start with in each jar. I'd say it's pretty happy though!

Once these jars are fully colonized I will be pasteurizing chopped straw in a cold water lime bath to set up my fruiting bags. I'm going to try splitting one jar of spawn between two fruiting bags to see how that goes. I know it's a bit thin, but obviously I'm in no big hurry and can wait for the fruiting bags to colonize.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pic...

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.

Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/79539

Four days ago I added some purchased oyster spawn to five jars containing popcorn or rye (after sterilizing of course). The next day I noticed these white spots on the kernels of only one jar. For reference, the pink oyster spawn in this jar was also added to a jar of rye, and there is no sign of these spots in that jar, so I believe the spawn itself was fine. Transfer was done in a still-air box, and this wasn't even the last jar I did, so I'm not really sure if it is contam or not?

One thing that strikes me (and I'm not sure if you can see the detail in this pic), I have seen white spots like this on sweet corn, which I believe is also a fungus, but the popcorn kernels were boiled for 20 minutes, dried for a couple hours, then put in a pressure cooker for 90 minutes at 15psi, so I don't know how any fungus would have remained in the jars?

Regardless, I was wondering if anyone had seen something like this before, and if the jar is likely a loss? The oyster spawn is actually growing growing, you can see one cluster starting right in the center, and it seems like it's cleaning the kernels that it expands to? This is my first time trying to expand spawn so I thought I'd ask for opinions on this...