Growing mushroom spawn
This album on growing mushroom spawn is based on the wonderful workshops of Guerilla House where we learned to grow mushrooms on straw, and wooden logs, and make spawn for seeding the straw and logs, at very low cost. To grow spawn you need spores or mushroom parts, preferably the 'stem'. Placed on a growing medium they soon begin to sprout mycelium.
cover the mushroom with glass when making a spore printMaking spore mass slurry in molasses
 mixing spore food... mycelium loves sugar |
 float a mushroom gills down in the bottle |
and the tiny spores will feed on the molassesGrowing spawn
on a burlap sack
take a mushroom
wrap it and roll it
a damp pasteurized sack
cover in newsprint
place shroom on sack
in a cardboard boxSprinkle the box regularly, keeping it damp, cool and in a shady place.
Growing mushroom spawn
on cardboard
You can pasteurize the cardboard with boiling water in a closed icebox. Pasteurized growing media are important while the mushroom is spreading through the spawn material because with all the food available at this stage, other competing organisms, ubiquitously present all around us, in our food, on our hands and in the air, can take root and outcompete our food mushroom. Once the material is mostly colonized its safer to expose the spawn to the next stage of growing medium.
pasteurize
wrap it
when its cool
and
add fungus
box it
a week later, mycelial threads expand across the cardboardWood chip spawn used for inoculating the straw
 the sweet smell |
 and crumbly feel |
Dowel spawn used for
inoculating the logs
see dowels impregnated with spawn in bag on leftOnce you have cultured some spawn you can use it to seed the growing medium on which you wish to grow mushrooms and see them fruit. A favorable growing medium for the mycelium provides the greatest yield and success rate with shop bought spawn. The medium can be treated by sterilizing it or pasteurizing it depending on the degree of removal of other organisms you are aiming for. The Guerilla House 'Low Tech Shrooms' workshop takes one through all the moves to be able to practice this exciting form of agriculture with minimal setup costs. You can move on to the other photo albums of the workshop, on growing mushrooms on straw and in the garden, and on growing oyster mushrooms on wooden logs. In both cases versatile Oyster mushrooms were used.
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