Dr. Pot
Matrice périnatale
- Inscrit
- 25 Août 2012
- Messages
- 12
I'm always up for a challenge, so I wanted to see if I could grow new mushrooms from some dried mushrooms that I found that were at least three years old. I didn't have high expectations for this, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. First, I took an old salsa jar, filled it with about a centimeter of brown rice, then added water to about two centimeters. I put it in the oven, set it to about 125 C, (250 F or so) with the lid on the jar very loosely. I left it for about 45 minutes, then shut the oven off. I left it about 20 minutes more, until the jar was warm, but not too hot to touch. Then I took the jar out of the oven, held the mushroom cap above it, and scraped the underside of the cap with a pin that I taped to the end of a shish kabob skewer, and sterilized with a lighter. When the surface of the rice was sufficiently specked with black specks, I put the lid back on, and left the jar in a warm, dark place for about a week and a half, checking on it every so often.
Sure enough, after not very long, four or five different fungi were growing on the surface of the rice. Most were various flavors of mold, but at least two of the spots were very clearly snowy-white mushroom mycelium. So I went and prepared a second jar the same as I had the first, with brown rice. Then I got the pin-skewer tool from before, sterilized the pin with a lighter, and stabbed a grain of rice that was clearly one of the mycelium-covered ones. Then I dropped that single grain of rice in the new, fresh jar, being much more careful not to let any dust get in this one. I cleaned out the first jar, which was clearly fated to become little more that a moldy jar of rice.
The second jar took off quickly. Since I started from mycelium, not spores, it quickly took over the jar a lot faster than spores would have. I had one spot of ordinary penicillium mold, which I picked out with the sterilized tip of a knife, but that was after the mycelium was already dominating the rice. Anyway, once the entire rice cake was white with mycelium, I cut it in half (so I could get the thing out of the jar) and pulled the two halves out separately. Then I put them in a shallow basin, that I covered with saran wrap, and put a half centimeter or so of water in the bottom. In a few days, I saw some little mycelium clusters form, that turned into little mushrooms, that grew into big mushrooms. All in all, I got about fifteen grams of dried mushrooms from that one cake, and made some spore prints for the next time I decide I want to grow them. Not bad for such a long-shot grow, with nothing but brown rice.
Sure enough, after not very long, four or five different fungi were growing on the surface of the rice. Most were various flavors of mold, but at least two of the spots were very clearly snowy-white mushroom mycelium. So I went and prepared a second jar the same as I had the first, with brown rice. Then I got the pin-skewer tool from before, sterilized the pin with a lighter, and stabbed a grain of rice that was clearly one of the mycelium-covered ones. Then I dropped that single grain of rice in the new, fresh jar, being much more careful not to let any dust get in this one. I cleaned out the first jar, which was clearly fated to become little more that a moldy jar of rice.
The second jar took off quickly. Since I started from mycelium, not spores, it quickly took over the jar a lot faster than spores would have. I had one spot of ordinary penicillium mold, which I picked out with the sterilized tip of a knife, but that was after the mycelium was already dominating the rice. Anyway, once the entire rice cake was white with mycelium, I cut it in half (so I could get the thing out of the jar) and pulled the two halves out separately. Then I put them in a shallow basin, that I covered with saran wrap, and put a half centimeter or so of water in the bottom. In a few days, I saw some little mycelium clusters form, that turned into little mushrooms, that grew into big mushrooms. All in all, I got about fifteen grams of dried mushrooms from that one cake, and made some spore prints for the next time I decide I want to grow them. Not bad for such a long-shot grow, with nothing but brown rice.
